Explicit performatives: utterances which have these characteristics and which
sound correct if you add hereby: I hereby promise you to ...
Non-performative utterance: sound wrong if we add hereby
But explicit performatives do not need to have those characterizations for
example: I charge you with treason or You re charged with
treason
The majority of the performatives are implicit. This means that they need an
expansion to make them explicit. You have to know something about the
situation.
Performatives are sentences which are not statements although they have the
structure of a statement I promise you to take a taxi home.
Performative utterances cannot be labelled true or false. In uttering a
performative the speaker does not only say something but performs an action.
Primary or primitive performatives: in order to understand a primary
performative utterance one needs to know something about the communicative
action.
Every utterance with which the speaker performs an illocutionary act is a
primary performative.
In order to understand the illocutionary force of an explicit performative one
does not need to know more about the communicative situation
=> explicit performative utterance make their illocutionary force explicit:
I promise, I name the ship, etc.
you can always hit hereby to an explicit but not to a primary
performative
In developing his theory Austin found out that there it takes more than just
performative and non-performative sentences to create a speech act.
He found out that there are many things which can go wrong with speech acts and
so he developed a second theory to find explanations which aren't based just on
the words anymore.