How to Do Things with Words: Performative Utterances Among the Limba of Sierra Leone

The Oxford philosopherJ. L. Austin has popularised the notion of'performative utterances'. These are utterances in which using a certain form of words is not to describe or express, nor to make a true or false statement. Rather, their point is to do something. This can be made clear through some examples. If one says 'I do' (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife, as said in the course of the marriage ceremony), 'I give and bequeath my watch to my brother' (in a will), 'I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth' (at the launching ceremolny), or 'I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow', these utterances do not describe what is being done, nor state that it is being done-they actually do it. As Austin puts it: 'To name the ship is to say (in the appropriate circumstances) the words name etc. When I say, before the registrar or altar, etc., do, I am not reporting on a marriage: I am indulging in it' (Austin I962: 6). Austin goes on to elaborate and analyse the idea of 'performative utterances', in particular to bring in the wider notion of the 'illocutionary force' of such speech acts (a concept to which I will return). But his basic concept of 'performative utterances' is the starting point of his whole exposition of the subject and can, likewise, serve to introduce the present discussion. Austin is of course not the only writer to point out the 'active' aspect of language. This indeed is a point that has particularly interested social anthropologists.' Austin has, however, developed the concept of the 'performative' and 'illocutionary' aspect of language in a particularly systematic and consistent way. He has, further, presented it as a general interpretation of speech rather than as one arising specifically from the study of non-industrial societies or intended to explain distinctive forms such as ritual or 'magical' utterances. To follow Austin's analysis thus has the additional merit of taking a concept developed in an industrial context (and a concept, moreover, taken seriously by philosophers) and showing that it is also relevant in a non-industrial and non-literate community. This article applies the concept of 'performative utterances' to the Limba. The Limba are a group of just under 200,000 people, mainly agriculturalists, living in the hills and swamps of northern Sierra Leone. The area has been one of the most remote and undeveloped of Sierra Leone and, till very recently, there were few schools'and little or no opportunity for paid employment in the area. To a larger extent than most peoples in Sierra Leone the Limba still keep to what they consider their 'traditional' way of life based on rice farming, palmwine tapping and reverence for their local authorities, though they are now beginning to take part in politics and economic development on a national scale. It is illuminating to analyse some of their speech acts in terms of Austin's 'performative utterances .