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J. L. Austin
John Langshaw Austin OBE FBA (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was an English philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.
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 morphological 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 metaphysics of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning.
Austin was born in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, the second son of Geoffrey Langshaw Austin (1884–1971), an architect, and Mary Hutton Bowes-Wilson (1883–1948; née Wilson). In 1921 the family moved to Scotland, where Austin's father became the secretary of St Leonards School, St Andrews. Austin was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1924, earning a scholarship in Classics, and went on to study classics at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1929.
In 1930 Austin received a First in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) and in the following year won the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose. In finals in 1933 he received a first in Literae Humaniores (Philosophy and Ancient History). Literae Humaniores introduced Austin to serious philosophy and gave him a lifelong interest in Aristotle. Austin won a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, that year, but aside from being friends with Isaiah Berlin, he did not like its lack of structure, and undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Austin's early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Plato (particularly the Theaetetus). His contemporary influences included G. E. Moore, John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. These contemporary philosophers shaped their views about general philosophical questions on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgements we make, as they took our specific judgements to be relatively more secure than our general judgements. According to Guy Longworth, writing in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "It's plausible that some aspects of Austin's distinctive approach to philosophical questions derived from his engagement with [Moore, Wilson, and Prichard]."
During World War II, Austin joined the military—in July 1940—and married his student Jean Coutts (in the spring of 1941). Austin served in the British Intelligence Corps, and was responsible for as many as 500 analysts. Known as "the Martians", the group's preparation for D-Day helped keep Allied casualties much lower than expected. Austin left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was honoured for his intelligence work with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.
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J. L. Austin
John Langshaw Austin OBE FBA (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was an English philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.
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 morphological 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 metaphysics of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning.
Austin was born in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, the second son of Geoffrey Langshaw Austin (1884–1971), an architect, and Mary Hutton Bowes-Wilson (1883–1948; née Wilson). In 1921 the family moved to Scotland, where Austin's father became the secretary of St Leonards School, St Andrews. Austin was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1924, earning a scholarship in Classics, and went on to study classics at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1929.
In 1930 Austin received a First in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) and in the following year won the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose. In finals in 1933 he received a first in Literae Humaniores (Philosophy and Ancient History). Literae Humaniores introduced Austin to serious philosophy and gave him a lifelong interest in Aristotle. Austin won a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, that year, but aside from being friends with Isaiah Berlin, he did not like its lack of structure, and undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Austin's early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Plato (particularly the Theaetetus). His contemporary influences included G. E. Moore, John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. These contemporary philosophers shaped their views about general philosophical questions on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgements we make, as they took our specific judgements to be relatively more secure than our general judgements. According to Guy Longworth, writing in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "It's plausible that some aspects of Austin's distinctive approach to philosophical questions derived from his engagement with [Moore, Wilson, and Prichard]."
During World War II, Austin joined the military—in July 1940—and married his student Jean Coutts (in the spring of 1941). Austin served in the British Intelligence Corps, and was responsible for as many as 500 analysts. Known as "the Martians", the group's preparation for D-Day helped keep Allied casualties much lower than expected. Austin left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was honoured for his intelligence work with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.