Speech Acts in LiteratureStanford University Press, 2001 - 238 pages This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve as examples and imaginary dialogues that forestall potential objections. How to Do Things with Words is not the triumphant establishment of a fully elaborated theory of speech acts, but the story of a failure to do that, the story of what Austin calls a "bogging down." After an introductory chapter that explores Austin's book in detail, the two following chapters show how Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man in different ways challenge Austin's speech act theory generally and his expulsion of literature specifically. Derrida shows that literature cannot be expelled from speech acts rather that what he calls "iterability" means that any speech act may be literature. De Man asserts that speech act theory involves a radical dissociation between the cognitive and positing dimensions of language, what Austin calls language's "constative" and "performative" aspects. Both Derrida and de Man elaborate new speech act theories that form the basis of new notions of responsible and effective politico-ethical decision and action. The fourth chapter explores the role of strong emotion in effective speech acts through a discussion of passages in Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Austin. The final chapter demonstrates, through close readings of three passages in Proust, the way speech act theory can be employed in an illuminating way in the accurate reading of literary works. |
From inside the book
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Contents
Jacques Derrida | 63 |
Paul de Man | 140 |
Derrida | 155 |
5 Marcel Proust | 177 |
Allegory as Speech Act | 214 |
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Common terms and phrases
asserts Austin's examples bogging citation cited claim concept Declaration of Independence deconstruction Derrida says DI/E différance discourse distinction effect emotion essay ethical etiolated excuse expression felicitous performative felicitous speech act fictional force French gesture guage intention ironic irony iterability J. L. Austin J. O. Urmson Jacques Derrida Je t'aime jokes language lecture LI/F Limited Inc a b literary locution Man's Marcel marks Mary Magdalen mative means never Nietzsche ordinary-language Oxford parasitic Paris passage passion performative and constative performative utterance perhaps person philosophical poetry political positing possible proper name prosopopoeias Proust Rachel reader reading Recherche rhetoric rida Saint-Loup Sarl Sarl's saturated say Je t'aime Searle Searle's seminar sense sentence Signature Event Context someone speak speech acts speech-act theory telephone Things with Words tion trans University Press voice wants Wittgenstein writing