constative

Constative is a term from the philosophy of language used to describe a category of utterances that aim to describe a state of affairs and can be true or false. The concept was popularized by J. L. Austin in his analysis of speech acts, where constatives are contrasted with performatives, which accomplish actions through utterance alone.

Constatives are characterized by their truth-conditional content; they report facts about the world and their truth value depends on how the world actually is. Examples include statements like “The Eiffel Tower is in Paris” or “It is raining.” In contrast, performatives such as “I promise to come” or “I hereby declare war” perform an action by virtue of the utterance itself and do not primarily function as reports about the world. Some sentences can express declarative content while also serving as performative acts, depending on context and intention.

In modern linguistic practice, the constative-performative distinction is often seen as oversimplified. Many researchers analyze speech acts in terms of illocutionary force, context, and felicity conditions rather than strictly separating statements into constatives and performatives. As a result, the term constative is used less frequently in contemporary linguistics and philosophy, and descriptions of utterances typically emphasize descriptive or informative content alongside their communicative force. Nevertheless, the concept remains a useful historical reference for understanding early discussions of how language describes the world versus how it acts within it.