How to read how to do things with words: on Sbisà’s proof by contradiction

Wanderer, J. and Townsend, L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5992-162X (2024) How to read how to do things with words: on Sbisà’s proof by contradiction. Philosophia. ISSN 1574-9274 doi: 10.1007/s11406-024-00714-8

Abstract/Summary

Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà’s broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin’s narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà’s own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/115213
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s11406-024-00714-8
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > Philosophy
Publisher	Springer
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