J. L. Austin and Literal Meaning

Abstract

Alice Crary has recently developed a radical reading of J. L. Austin's philosophy of language. The central contention of Crary's reading is that Austin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context-invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with Crary about the continuing importance of Austin's work, and I think Crary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of Austin's targets, and the arguments that Crary attributes to Austin or finds Austinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge Crary's reading of Austin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning.

What Do We Mean by Performativity in Organizational and Management Theory? The Uses and Abuses of Performativity

“…As a perlocutionary act, Austin's writing has reshaped the mindsets of generations of philosophers, and his works still occupy a prominent position in the theory of language, a field in which it still sparked controversies about the interpretation of 'literal meaning' (see Crary (2002) vs Hansen (2012)). Austin's ideas have then 'migrated' across social sciences, where they provoked radical contributions and a series of new conceptualizations of performativity (Denis 2006).…”