Literary Performative: On The Speech-Act Dimension In Contemporary Western Literary Theory

The speech-act theory, initiated by J. L. Austin and developed by Paul Grice and John Searle etc, has effected another significant change in contemporary literary theory since"the linguistic turn"contributed by Ferdinand de Saussure. Performative Theory of Literature, which is the direct result of speech-act theory, regards literature both as an act that constructs a textual world and as a"material practice and social action"(by Terry Eagleton) that in saying words, achieves something such as creating reality, changing the reality and effecting the reality.An agreement is generally reached and thus a theory is formed after inter- and intradisciplinary disputes upon the question of literary performative. Literature is considered as speech acts and literary utterances as performative which"does things with words"in their own way. Both the simple notions of literary referentiality and literary self-sufficiency are avoided in this theory. Instead, it suggests, on one hand, literature does not objectively refer to or reflect the exterior world, but constructs a relatively independent fictional world; on the other hand, the literary world is not fully enclosed and detached from reality, but is an in-and-for-itself scene where concepts, events and world are produced with such constitutive and interactive elements as the author, the reader and the context as the appropriateness conditions. It unites in a dialectical way imagination and truth, virtual world and real world, the inside and outside of the text, form and content, constative and performative, thus shows its inclusive theoretical gesture.This dissertation includes six chapters besides"Introduction"and"Conclusion"."Introduction"presents the concepts of"speech act"and"literary performative", probes into the generative contexts of the formation of Performative Theory of Literature, and combs the literature review in the West and China on this topic.Chapter 1,"The Performative Possibilities of Literary Language", discusses Austin, Searle, and Ohmann's paradoxical introductive arguments on literary performative and here the relation between literary language and ordinary language is also posed for argumentation.In Chapter 2,"The Performative Modality of Literary Language", mainly studies Stanley Fish, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and J. Hillis Miller's respective argumentations on how literature does things and sketches such various profiles of literary performative as readers'interpretive act, the exemplary role of literary performative, literary rhetoric and the self-functioning of literature. Chapter 3,"The Conventions and Context of Literary Performative", discusses the felicity and effectivity of the performative language which has been long concerned since the making of speech-act theory, expounds both the accession of Performative Theory of Literature on the conventions and context, and its particular interpretive context, modes and ethics of performance.Chapter 4,"Literary Performative and Meaning-Production"deals with the kinship between literary performative and literary meaning production, focusing on Stanley Fish's"interpretive act", Paul de Man's literary rhetoric and J. Hillis Miller's"double reading".Chapter 5 and 6 are comprehensive discussions on Performative Theory of Literature. Chapter 5,"The Operative Mechanism of Literary Performative", generalizes the operative mechanisms required of literary performative for its effectivity on reality: self-authorizing, reading act, and mutual cooperation are the most important ones among them.Chapter 6,"Literary Performative and Social Reality", discusses the complex relation between literary world and social reality in terms of Performative Theory of Literature. Unlike Mimetic Theory, Performative Theory of Literature interrogates the hegemonic status of reality or ordinary language on one side and the subjection of literature on the other. It suggests an open, multiple and intertextual reciprocity between textual world and social reality and the function of language on reality connects cultural studies and Performative Theory of Literature with a new sight for both."Conclusion"briefly generalizes such theoretical characteristics of Performative Theory of Literature as confluction and construction, and it predicts the tendency of cultural performative.