SPEECH ACT THEORY AND LITERATURE: MEANING, CONTEXT AND ITERABILITY

Speech act theory, developed by the British philosopher of language J. L. Austin, is primarily based on the distinction between constative and performative utterances. Making such a distinction, Austin intends to distinguish between the descriptive use of language and a certain kind of language use by which the subject performs an action. While constatives are either true or false in their description of the world; performatives are neither true nor false since they have no truth value but only the power to ‘do’ something as in the cases of promising, declaring, betting and etc. Therefore Austin’s focus is on the power of language to create a new dimension of reality (especially social reality) which did not exist before the utterance of these certain expressions. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Austin’s speech act theory problematises the conventionality, contextuality and the iterability of performative utterances in their formulaic patterns. By this way, speech act theory becomes an appropriate tool for the study of literary discourse and of the dynamics of literary texts. In that sense, Derrida’s twist brings about an integration of speech act theory with literary theory. Hence, it will be claimed in this study that performative utterances’ power to create values and responsibilities in a social context should be scrutinized in parallel with the transformative power of literature. Finally, it must be considered that the ethical and the ideological functions of literary speech acts can be more conveniently evaluated within the framework of the performativity of literary utterances.