It is a pleasure on our part to introduce our publication of Bengali book entitled  প্রবন্ধসংগ্রহ : জে.এল. অস্টিন ― ভাষান্তর ও সমীক্ষা by Prof. Sandhya Basu, Madhu Kapoor and Kakali Ghoshal. As clear from the title, it is a translation and a somewhat critical study of some of the papers of the great British linguist philosopher J. L. Austin. His linguistic-philosophy took a different approach from Wittgenstein and other Language Philosophers who were mainly interested in formal languages representing states of affairs and making assertions about the world; whereas, Austin’s concern was regarding the utterances having variety of uses in our daily usage. The examination of ordinary language enables us to shell out attention to the wealth of linguistic facts and to undertake the philosophical problems from a fresh and unbiased standpoint.

 

Austin’s most celebrated contribution to the contemporary philosophy is his theory of ‘Speech act’, presented in “How to Do Things with Words”. He is best known for his two major contributions: first, his ‘linguistic phenomenology’, a peculiar method of philosophical analysis of the concepts and ways of expression of everyday language; and second, speech act theory, the idea that every use of language carries a performative dimension which is displayed in the well- known slogan, “to say something is to do something”. For him, language is a tool which handles the various contexts of ordinary language speaker. For Austin, philosophy is not an endeavor to be pursued privately, but a collective labour. Thus goes his famous remark, “It takes two to make

a truth”.

 

A few of his papers that are examined in this work are––

‘Ifs and Cans’,

‘How to Talk – Some Simple Ways’,

‘Truth’ ,

‘Pretending’ ,

‘Performative Utterances’,

‘Unfair to Facts’,

‘Other minds’,

‘Three Ways of Spilling Ink’,

‘Are There A’priori Concepts’ and

‘A Plea for Excuses’.

 

The book is an analysis of the way in which words are used by the speakers of English society and Philosophers too but with a twist. The essays narrate the meaning and uses of words with critical approach just to show that there is no single and fixed meaning of a word, yet more or less fixed too, otherwise communication would not have been possible. A simple example of ‘excuse’ will be enough to go for the in-depth study of the papers of the book. The word ‘excuse’ is generally used by someone who is sorry for his mistakes. But sometimes when one is not sorry for anything, one also uses the expression ‘excuse me’. But why, when you have not made any mistake? May be you have disturbed someone, or even if  you are not sorry yet you try to settle

 

the issue  between  the conflicting parties,  or you want to enter the room seeking permission and in many other ways one uses the word. The complex and intricate structure of the linguistic usages has been brought out with niceties in Austin’s approach.

 

A child who has spilled ink in class is a distinct case ― whether he did the act intentionally, deliberately or on purpose. Austin reveals the differences among the three terms that turns out to mark different ways in which it is possible to produce an action. The glass may slip out of my hands because of my astonishment and not deliberately or purposely.

 

Similar is the case with the word ‘freedom’ and its different usages. He has dismantled the complex internal details of the machinery of different words used for free action in different ways. On occasion we try to get out of things, to show that we did not act freely or were not responsible for our action. Freedom is not a name for characteristics of actions but a name of a dimension in which actions are assessed. There are many other interesting intricacies regarding word-usages that have been dealt with in this publication.

Readers interested in linguistic philosophy of Austin can avail this Bengali book from the publisher ‘Ebang Mushayera’, Kolkata.