Thursday, March 5, 2009
Austin Assignment
By Tuesday, please compose a short blog post. Identify a particular speech act and talk a bit about how Austin might understand or make sense of it. The category 'speech act' is quite expansive, so you need not limit yourself to examples that Austin uses, or even examples that seem particularly similar to those in How to Do Things with Words. For instance, you might consider a particular hate crime as a speech act. You could ask how this speech act could be considered a performative utterance -- what does it do? Or you might think about something said in the context of last year's presidential election. Alternatively, you could think about what Austin might say about a marriage ceremony taking place today, in Berkeley, in which two women say 'I do' to each other. You could even start thinking about the curious condition of theatrical or cinematic speech acts by picking a particular line/scene in a play or movie and trying to think about how it might fit, or not fit, within Austin's unstable system. In other words, this assignment is meant to be an opportunity for you to probe the limits of Austin's argument and to bring his text into dialog with a topic or situation of interest to you.
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In response to the "I do" of two women ~
ReplyDeleteAccording to Austin there should be no difference between a man and woman saying, “I do” than a woman and woman saying “I do” because what Austin focuses on is the speech act – what is being said and done – and not who is saying or doing it. In the case of two women saying “I do,” Austin would critique it just as he would a heterosexual couple saying “I do” in the sense that as long as the performative utterance is followed by appropriate and sincere feelings, thoughts and intentions, he recognizes the speech act’s legitimacy.
Contrastingly, if Austin’s speech act of performative utterance is applied to the law and people who are against gay marriage then saying “I do” would equate to what Austin calls an abuse. People against gay marriage through Austin’s definitions of abuse and performative utterance would say that two women cannot fulfill or complete what it entails to be a legally married couple; they, technically, cannot do everything a legal heterosexual married couple can such as be legally married, being recognized by law to have the same benefits married couples have.
Everything depends on who uses Austin’s speech act theory and in what context it is applied; two women saying “I do” can be either a performative utterance or an abuse.