Abstract
John Langshaw Austin (1911–1960) was a British philosopher whose work contributed to the understanding of philosophy and language. In his work on language, he is mostly known for his work on speech acts . He presented this theory at Harvard University in 1955 as part of the William James Lectures, and subsequently, and portions of it were later published in How to Do Things with Words (1962), his most influential work. Specifically, Austin argued that language is used to accomplish actions rather than only making assertions, so‐called performative utterances. Thus, the truth value of an utterance is not the only aspect that is central to meaning making. Austin's theory makes a distinction between different aspects of speech acts: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. By analyzing multiple levels of an utterance, Austin's work inspired future generations of linguists who further developed his theories on language and speech acts.
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