Getting into the (Speech) Act
Autobiography as Theory and Performance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4387597 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lead D Hewitt (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1987 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 32 |
| Publication date | 1987-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SubStance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0049-2426 • E-ISSN: 1527-2095 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3685383 |
| OpenAlex | W2327382946 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 3 |
Why associate the names of such very different authors as British philosopher J. L. Austin and French autobiographer Michel Leiris? What does Austin's speech act theory have to do with Leiris's autobiography? Successful might be one way of formulating the answer: the critical successes of both can, to a great extent, be attributed to the intriguing ways in which their respective works fail to achieve the goals the authors had proposed. The incompleteness of Austin's theory and of Leiris's autobiography has kindled the fires of many critics, beckoning them to finish, expand, and question Austin's theory, or to explain why Leiris's failure is inherent in his project and its execution. Granted, this is an appraisal of both authors' works via their effects on a readership, but it is precisely the status of linguistic acts and their effects that is at stake here. To perform an act in (with) language is one of the major issues that Leiris and Austin have persistently raised, although they approach the question from different angles: Austin tries to establish a theory of how ordinary language, whether oral or written, does things (under what conditions, with what effects), while Leiris strives to make autobiography a literary act-to do something with his words. A certain confusion arises, however, in the distinction between theorizing about speech acts and accomplishing them: when Leiris's autobiography evolves into a questioning of what autobiography is (and what he is doing) and Austin's work is considered as a speech act itself (and not just a book about speech acts), the boundaries begin to blur. In positing a resemblance between Leiris's and Austin's work that expressly straddles the dividing line between genres, the question of limits and definitions immediately arises. Critics engaged in defining literary genres, and in particular autobiography, have frequently turned to Austin's theory in an attempt to create a viable set of rules for delimiting the contours of the genre.' After exploring the way Austin's theory affords critics a certain content informing definitions, I propose to com
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| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,1 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2019 (15) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |