Performative

The Performative is the part of speech representing the information conveyed by the fact that a speaker chose to say a particular sentence.

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As an example, suppose that you are standing with your friend by the window, looking out at the rain. Your friend says, "It's raining." Obviously he does not wish to actually communicate the fact that it is raining - you already know that (since you're also looking out of the window), and he knows that you know it. However, when you hear that sentence, you will probably reason that there must be some reason for him to mention it - that it's raining particularly hard, or that the rain is going to stop him or you from doing something you had planned, or that the rain was unexpected, or something similar. The part of speech which communicated that fact is the performative.

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Another example is the advertising slogan used by Microsoft: "Where do you want to go today?" By itself, it is just a question; it carries no suggestion that products should be purchased. The actual advertising is all in the performative, which communicates the real slogan: "Microsoft will take you wherever you want to go."

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A sentence may have meaning both in itself and in the performative. For example, if you're going into a club wearing jeans, and the bouncer stops you and says "Jeans are not allowed", then this may be information which you were unaware of; the performative communicates the further obvious deduction ".. and since you are wearing them, you may not enter." This seems so obvious at first that it seems bizarre to suggest this is part of the communication, but consider how strange it would be if you were not wearing jeans, and the bouncer stopped you, said "Jeans are not allowed", and then allowed you to enter! This seems like contradictory behaviour, yet nothing the bouncer has done has contradicted the proposition that jeans are not allowed; he has however contradicted the performative of that statement.

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In English, the performative is a natural part of all sentences. In some other languages, it is not; for instance, in Japanese, the performative must be explicitly enabled via the use of the sentence-final modifier yo.

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J.L.Austin introduced the further notion of the explicit performative: sentences which state that you intend to do something, which actually do that thing as a result of being spoken! For example, an employer can fire someone by simply stating "You're fired!"; you can apologise by saying "I apologise"; you can thank someone by saying "I thank you." The existence of these sentences opens up the question of whether language is truly purely for communication, or can be for actual action as well.

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