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This is an apparently straightforward point that would seem basic to any theory of pragmatics or rhetoric. 'Who says what to whom' is a defining aspect of an utterance; and that such contextualization will 'make a difference' to meaning and understanding is not hard to affirm. Austin adds the following paragraph, however (ib.): |
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But in a way these resources are over-rich: they lend themselves to equivocation and inadequate discrimination; and moreover, we use them for other purposes, e.g. insinuation. The explicit performative rules out equivocation and keeps the performance fixed, relatively. |
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This paragraph systematically undoes the apparently straightforward point of the first paragraph. 'But in a way' introduces both a qualification and, in 'in a way', an equivocation. 'These resources are over-rich: they lend themselves to equivocation and lack of discrimination': the circumstances of an utterance are too much, 'over-rich'; they produce an excess, over and above language resources, an excess that threatens control and the 'success' of a communication by introducing 'equivocation and lack of discrimination'. The 'total speech situation' is worryingly excessive as much as it is 'an exceedingly important aid'. So, too, such circumstantial factors may add different performative forces to an utterance: they are used for other purposes, such as 'insinuation', which confuse the simplicity or explicitness of the performative. 'The explicit performative', however, like 'I promise' or 'I apologize', rules out equivocation except under certain . . . circumstances. Such explicitness can keep the performative fixed, that is, without equivocation or lack of discrimination. Or rather it may keep the performative fixed, 'relatively'. The final adverb with fine wit precisely adds a note of equivocation, even a lack of discrimination. Austin typically as he worries about equivocation, equivocates, finally. |
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What this paragraph highlights is the problem of what counts as the circumstances of an utterance, and how such over-rich possibilities may or may not affect understanding. For Austin, the requirement of 'the total speech-act in the total speech situation' brings a hesitant recognition and exclusion of 'circumstances' as the excess that threatens the fixedness of performance. A linguistic example must be framed by the context in which it is uttered: but the framing circumstances destabilize with excess that very determination of meaning. Thus Austin tries to use the nature of the performative its explicitness to rule out the dangers of the equivocal context. The frame is framed thus by its content . . . |
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This problem of contextualization and framing is integral to the written text. If words gain sense from their context their circumstances of utterance where is the limit to reading a word 'in context'? As sentence expands to paragraph to scene to act to play . . .the threat is of 'an uncontrol- |
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