To Speak And To Act. Language As A Means Of Producing Social Change

The performativity theory starts from a critique of the descriptivist and representation a list theory of language, thus, language and word use cease to appear as mere modalities of describing the world and our connection with the environment, and become a manner of acting and of producing action. Prefigured in the Theory of Communicative Action of J.L. Austin, further analyzed by J. R. Searle and other pragmatists, the illocutionary speech acts make the distinction between the content of an expression and the action that we undertake through it. Their transformation in action is a transition from the assertion plan to the realization plan, through the explicit performative utterances (“I order you to”, “I ask you to”, “I solicit that you”).