J. L. Austin

John Langshaw Austin <a href="/facts/Officer_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire/HlY9buuN">OBE</a> <a href="/facts/Fellow_of_the_British_Academy/4gTMDxbs">FBA</a> (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was an English <a href="/facts/Philosophy_of_language/qwNCwF4W">philosopher of language</a> and leading proponent of <a href="/facts/Ordinary_language_philosophy/pA43hoje">ordinary language philosophy</a>, best known for developing the theory of <a href="/facts/Speech_acts/l11PGwQu">speech acts</a>.
Austin pointed out that we use language to do things as well as to assert things, and that the utterance of a statement like "I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as doing something—here, making a promise—rather than making an assertion about anything; hence the title of one of his best-known works, How to Do Things with Words (1955). 
Austin, in formulating this theory of speech acts, mounts a significant challenge to the philosophy of language, far beyond merely elucidating a class of <a href="/facts/Morphology_(linguistics)/fWkzsYE8">morphological</a> sentence forms that function to do what they name. 
Austin's work ultimately suggests that all speech and all utterance is the doing of something with words and signs, challenging a <a href="/facts/Metaphysics/fSFt6SHe">metaphysics</a> of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and <a href="/facts/Semantics/1L4WwLAP">meaning</a>.

J. L. Austin open-in-new

J. L. Austin