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John Langshaw "J. L." Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, perhaps best-known for developing the theory of speech acts.〔Warnock, G. J. "John Langshaw Austin, a biographical sketch". ''Symposium on J. L. Austin'', ed. K.T. Fann. New York: Humanities Press, 1969. p. 3.〕 Prior to Austin, the attention of linguistic and analytic philosophers had been directed almost exclusively to statements, assertions, and propositions — to linguistic acts that (at least in theory) have truth-value. This led to problems when analyzing certain types of statements, for example in determining the truth conditions for such statements as "I promise to do so-and-so." Austin pointed out that we use language to ''do'' things as well as to ''assert'' things, and that the utterance of a statement like "I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as ''doing'' something — ''making a promise'' — rather than making an assertion about anything. Hence the name of one of his best-known works ''How to do Things with Words''. ==Life== Austin was born in Lancaster, England, the second son of Geoffrey Langshaw Austin (1884–1971), an architect, and his wife Mary Bowes-Wilson (1883–1948). In 1922 the family moved to Scotland, where Austin's father became the secretary of St Leonard's School, St Andrews. Austin was educated at Shrewsbury School in 1924, earning a scholarship in Classics, and went on to study Classics at Balliol College, Oxford in 1929. In 1933, he received a First in Literae Humaniores (Classics and Philosophy) as well as the Gaisford Prize for Greek prose and first class honours in his finals. Literae Humaniores introduced him to serious philosophy and gave him a lifelong interest in Aristotle.〔Hacker, P. M. S. 'Austin, John Langshaw (1911–1960)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (online ) (subscription site), accessed 16 Aug 2008〕 He undertook his first teaching position in 1935, as fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford. Austin's early interests included Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz, and Plato (especially the ''Theaetetus''). His more contemporary influences included especially G. E. Moore, John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard. The contemporary influences shaped their views about general philosophical questions on the basis of careful attention to the more specific judgements we make. They took our specific judgements to be more secure than more general judgements. It's plausible that some aspects of Austin's distinctive approach to philosophical questions derived from his engagement with the last three. 〔 Longworth, Guy. "John Langshaw Austin." Stanford University. Stanford University, 11 Dec. 2012. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.〕 During World War II Austin served in the British Intelligence Corps, MI6. It has been said of him that, "he more than anybody was responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day intelligence" (reported in Warnock 1963: 9). Austin left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and was honored for his intelligence work with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), the French Croix de guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=John Langshaw Austin )〕 After the war Austin became White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. He began holding his famous "Austin's Saturday Mornings" where students and colleagues would discuss language usages (and sometimes books on language) over tea and crumpets, but published little.〔See John Passmore, ''A Hundred Years of Philosophy'' (New York: Basic Books, 1967) 459, n. 2.〕 Austin visited Harvard and Berkeley in the mid-fifties, in 1955 delivering the William James Lectures at Harvard that would become ''How to Do Things With Words'', and offering a seminar on excuses whose material would find its way into "A Plea for Excuses".〔''Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society'', 1956-57. See Stanley Cavell, ''The Claim of Reason: Wittegenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy'' (New York: Oxford, 1979) xv.〕 It was at this time that he met and befriended Noam Chomsky. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1956 to 1957. Austin died at the age of 48 of lung cancer. At the time, he was developing a semantic theory based on sound symbolism, using the English gl-words as data. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「J. L. Austin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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