performativa

Performativa, in linguistics and philosophy of language, refers to utterances that perform an action simply by being spoken, rather than merely describing a state or fact. The concept was introduced by J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words, where utterances that enact a commitment, a promise, an apology, or a declaration are treated as performatives. Examples include I apologize, I promise, I name this ship, and I declare war. Performatives can be explicit, using a performative verb, or implicit when the act is accomplished without an overt performative construction.

A key idea in performative theory is the distinction between illocutionary and locutionary acts. An utterance’s illocutionary force is the action it performs (apology, promise, warning), while the locution is its grammatical form and the words themselves. For a performative to be felicitous, several conditions are typically required: the speaker must have the authority or social standing to perform the act, the context must permit such an act, and the speaker’s intention and the sincerity of the act must align with social conventions. If these conditions are not met, the performative can fail or be “misfire,” as in a promise given without the authority to bind others.

The influence of performatives extends beyond linguistics into law, ritual, and social theory. In gender studies, the term per formative or performativity describes how identity, including gender, is produced through repeated actions and norms rather than fixed traits. Related concepts include illocutionary, locutionary, and perlocutionary acts, and the broader study of how language performs actions in social life.