INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

function,” 729 and particularly the pragmatic functions which Sikhs may attribute worship
acts that involve renditions of gurbani. Lay Sikhs are more inclined to speak
about the gains they expect from devotional engagements in the sacred verses of
Guru Granth Sahib, rather than occupying themselves with exegetical elaborations on
the scriptural content. The content and form of gurbani is ontologically way beyond
the level of humans, but as the supra-mundane words manifest in worship acts they
are believed to bring about an infinite number of effects on human life, and even have
power to change the properties of both time and space. From an analytical viewpoint,
it would be possible to argue that these meta-pragmatic discourses reveal the existence
of a “performativist language” ideology which does not only value what the
sacred words are saying but also what they are capable of doing. When the sacred
gurbani hymns move into performance they are attributed power and agency to accomplish
things in the social world.
ACHIEVING THINGS BY WORDS
Anthropologists have long recognized the importance of studying semantic components
as well as social functions of language, text, and speech. When Malinowski
presented his theories on language during the first half of the twentieth century he
perceived language more as a mode of action rather than a means of thinking. In his
study of Trobriand gardening rituals Malinowski made a plea for the study of language
within the actual context of usage and presented both the referential content of
ritual speech and its relation to religious beliefs and sociological and ritual contexts. 730
It was however Austin’s seminal collection of lectures called How to Do Things with
Words (1962) that came to draw considerable attention to the ways by which language
functions. According to Austin an utterance is not merely a way of communicating
referential content, but an act that may achieve something in the social world. Austin
distinguishes between “constatives”, or statements that describe a situation or state of
affairs and are capable of being true or false, and “performative utterances”, which
do not necessarily describe a situation and cannot be taken as true or false but do
something rather than say something. Constatives and performatives are not to be
seen as two radically different forms of utterances but different ways by which utterances
operate ‒ the former signifying things and the latter doing things. 731
729
Keane 1997a: 57.
730
Malinowski 1935.
731
When Austin unfolded his speech theory he struggled with the opposition between constatives
and performatives. After closer scrutiny he discovered that all constatives, especially putative
statements, do not drastically differ in character from performatives and therefore came to
the conclusion that some speech acts do have the shared ability to both say something while
doing something (Austin 1962: 136 ‒ 139). The distinction between performatives and constatives
are still useful for an analytical separation between the propositional content of texts in
relation to their intended functions and uses.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008