Marina Sbisà – författare

This work sets out Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an exhaustive examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, Austin here finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of `illocutionary forces' of utterances which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophical problems.

This book collects seventeen essays published between 1984 and 2020, in which Marina Sbisà develops her distinctive approach to speech acts and related pragmatic phenomena. Drawing inspiration from the work of J. L. Austin, the essays examine the categories of speech act theory and apply these categories in the context of natural discourse and conversation, with the aim of providing an accurate analysis of how speech can be action. Sbisà devotes particular attention to normative aspects of language and language use: speech acts reshape the normative context in which they occur by assigning or unassigning deontic properties to relevant parties. Emphasis is placed on the normative aspect of linguistically mandated presuppositions as well as the rational grounds of implicature. The conventionalist view of speech acts developed here turns on the role of intersubjective agreement in deontic updating, in a framework that shifts focus from single utterances to discursive sequences and conversational interaction. This view challenges the main tenets of a Gricean intentionalist understanding of speech act performance, paving the way for a theory of speech actions centred on the normatively transformative power of illocution. Throughout the essays, examples and applications are given to illustrate how the view put forward contributes to understanding the social and political dimensions of linguistic activity, such as hidden persuasive strategies, power imbalances both within and outside the context of conversation, and the relevance of language and discourse to gender issues.

Austinian Themes offers a reconstruction of philosophical views on several themes developed by J. L. Austin. Exploring Austin's work in detail through a series of thematically organized chapters, Marina Sbisà draws on both published work as well as unpublished manuscript notes to offer a defence of Austin's speech act theory, characterized by a specific notion of illocution, against some important criticisms. Sbisà offers a reconstruction of Austin's responsibility-based conception of action drawing on his remarks on acts and actions in How to Do Things with Words and in later papers. Exploring Austin's contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of perception (including his realist stance, anti-scepticism, and presentational view of perception), Sbisà analyses the roles that he assigns to knowledge in the dynamics of assertion. On the theme of truth, Austin's claims are expounded and explained as worthy of reassessment. Other chapters explore the ways in which Austin deals with sense, reference, 'family resemblances', truth-falsity assessments, and context-dependence. Austin's most famous statement of method, as outlining a 'linguistic phenomenology', is cast as analogous to Husserl's phenomenology in adopting an epoché which isolates language (rather than consciousness), a reading which helps to clarify several characteristic positions adopted by Austin. On metaphilosophical themes, Sbisà analyses the notion of ordinariness, distinguishing it from common sense and the endorsement of the 'Linguistic Turn', approaching it instead in terms of the by-default nature of the social bond and conversational cooperation. Various recurrent aspects of Austin's philosophy are illuminated: the opposition to dichotomies, the attention paid to intersubjectivity, the commitment to a 'sober' philosophy, and a strong sense of human situatedness.

John L. Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin’s conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin’s original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin’s work.