Jl Austin Quotes

After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

It is not enough to show how clever we are by showing how obscure everything is".

Philosophers often seem to think that they can just 'assign' any meaning whatever to any word; and so no doubt, in an absolutely trivial sense, they can (like Humpty-Dumpty).

In his great book How to Do Things with Words (1962), J.L. Austin considers the apparently simple sentence "France is hexagonal." He asks if this is true or false, a question that makes perfect sense if the job of a sentence is to be faithful to the world. His answer is that it depends. If you are a general contemplating a coming battle, saying that France is hexagonal might help you assess various military options of defense and attack; it would be a good sentence. But if you are a geographer charged with the task of mapping France's contours, saying that France is hexagonal might cost you your union card; a greater degree of detail and fineness of scale is required of mapmakers. "France is hexagonal," Austin explains, is true "for certain intents and purposes" and false or inadequate or even nonsensical for others. It is, he says, a matter of the "dimension of assessment" -- that is, a matter of what is the "right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions.

Język wyewoluował jako narzędzie koordynacji wspólnych działań, a fakt, że można w nim opisywać świat nie leży w jego naturze — jest raczej produktem ubocznym ewolucji języka. Mówiąc, że główną funkcją języka jest obrazowanie świata (wychwytywanie istot rzeczy czy odzwierciedlanie formalnych aspektów opisywanych sytuacji), dajemy się zwieść głęboko zakorzenionemu w tradycji Zachodu, ale poniekąd sztucznemu sposobowi myślenia. Jak słusznie zauważyli Wittgenstein i J.L. Austin, ograniczenie roli języka do narzędzia opisu świata sprawia, stajemy się ślepi na rozmaite funkcje, które język faktycznie spełnia; na to, że język jest narzędziem działania w świecie.

You have a donkey, so have I, and they graze in the same field. The day comes when I conceive a dislike for mine. I go to shoot it,draw a bead on it, fire: the brute falls in its tracks. I inspect the victim, and find to my horror that it is your donkey. I appear on your doorstep with the remains and say--what? 'I say, old sport, I'm awfully sorry, &c., I've shot your donkey by adccident'? Or 'by mistake'? Then again, I go to shoot my donkey as before, draw a bead on it, fire-but as I do so, the beasts move, and to my horror yours falls. Again the scene on the doorstep--what do I say? 'By mistake'? Or 'by accident'?

What do you get if you cross a chicken with a cement mixer? A brick-layer. **** Who invented fractions? Henry the 1/8th. **** How does Jack Frost get to work? By icicle. **** What do you call two robbers? A pair of knickers. **** There is a story that the noted linguist JL Austin was giving a lecture in which he stated: "Two negatives can make a positive but two positives can never make a negative." A voice from the lecture hall goes: "Yeah, yeah." **** Where does Santa work out? Down the gymney. **** Two planets meet. The first asks: "So, how are you?" The second answers: "Well, I'm sick, I've got Homo Sapiens." The first replies: "Oh, I know that one. No worries, it'll pass." ****