Studies in J.L. Austin's philosophy of language

Abstract

Chapter 1: I examine Austin's paper How to Talk from the point of view of the theory of meaning (sense and reference) there adumbrated. Chapter 2: I describe the operation of 'fitting' and 'matching' by means of which Austin, in How to Talk, claims to generate four distinct speech-acts from a given speech-situation. I then argue, against J.W. Roxbee Cox, that it is neither vacuous to speak of fitting an item to a given name while matching the 'item-type' to the 'sense' of the name, nor impossible to speak of fitting an item to a name while matching the 'sense' of the name to the 'item-type'. I go on, however, to claim that 'statements', 'descriptions', etc., the speech-acts schematized by Austin, are not distinguished in ordinary language in the way that Austin suggests they are. Chapter 3: I consider the role played by statements in the controversy between Austin and Strawson about Truth; I argue that some of the confusion about facts which that debate engendered rests on a prior confusion about statements…