Myth as political and social performance.

Abstract

Myth is a narrative that can preserve or alter social and political structures by its authoritative utterance under appropriate conditions. This kind of narrative shares the same normative rules as perlocutionary or performative speech acts. A performative is a category of speech act which, by its very pronouncement, can change a person's role, status or identity, or an object's significance or meaning. Speech acts have the performative power to change behavior if they are institutionalized and taken seriously by a community.