August 28, 2007
tea and speech act theory
I'm taking Philosophy of Language this semester. It's promising. I'm reading Austin. He writes in a way that makes me feel like we are sitting in arm chairs sharing a pot of tea. If he were here it would be true!
"And is it complicated? Well, it is complicated a bit; but life and truth and things do tend to be complicated. It's not things, it's philosophers that are simple. You will have heard it said, I expect, that oversimplification is the occupational disease of philosophers, and in a way one might agree with that. But for a sneaking suspicion that it's their occupation" --J. L. Austin, "Performative Utterances"
I'm reading Sayer's Strong Poison right now and the style of writing is very similar. Cozy.
Posted by linnea at August 28, 2007 12:23 AMIsn't Speech Act by Searle though?
Posted by: funke at August 29, 2007 11:10 PMSearle, Grice, and Austin all have a lot to say about speech act theory. They're the big names I've learned so far. According to Wikipedia, Austin was Searle's teacher and Searle built on his work. Searle did write a book called Speech Acts. So yeah.
Posted by: linnea at August 29, 2007 11:26 PM