Analyzing the Grammatical Basis for Separating Performative and Constative Utterances in Austin's Philosophy of Language

The Philosophy of Language studies the nature and function of Language. Regarding the function of language a controversy is there among the philosophers. According to the traditional philosophers the only function of language is to represent or communicate facts or information truly or falsely. In these context J. L. Austin introduces a new theory – the theory of performative utterance. According to him the performative utterance is neither true nor false but not meaningless or nonsense. Performative utterances deferent form descriptive (constative) utterance. Austin formulates four different criteria to isolate a performative from constative utterance. One of the most impotent criteria, for him, is namely grammatical criterion. He initially formulate grammatical criterion is: first person, singular number, present tense, active voice and indicative mood. So, my humble attempt in this paper is to see how does Austin examine the validity and workability of Grammatical criterion.