Performatives

A verb--such as promise, invite, apologize, and forbid--that explicitly conveys the kind
of speech act being performed.
Examples and Observations:

"As your lawyer, your brother, and your friend, I highly recommend that you get a
better lawyer."
(David Patrick Kelly as Jerry Horne in Twin Peaks, 1990)
"The faculty at Ohio's Bowling Green State University vetoed a professor's planned
course on political correctness. Kathleen Dixon, director of women's studies at the
university, explained: 'We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.'"
(George Will, Newsweek. Dec. 25, 2000)
"As your president, I would demand a science-fiction library, featuring an ABC of the
genre. Asimov, Bester, Clarke."
(Martin Prince in "Lisa's Substitute." The Simpsons, 1991)
"By saying we apologize we perform an expressive act simultaneously with the naming
of that expressive act. It is for this reason that apologize is called a performative verb,
defined as a verb denoting linguistic action that can both describe a speech act and
express it. This explains why we can say that we are sorry, but not that we are sorry on
someone else's behalf because be sorry only expresses, but does not describe the act
of making an apology."
(R. Dirven and M. Verspoor, Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. John
Benjamins, 2004)
"Generally, the performative verb . . . is in the simple present active and
the subject is I, but the verb may be in the simple present passive and the subject need
not be I: Smoking is forbidden; The committee thanks you for your services. A test for
whether a verb is being used performatively is the possible insertion ofhereby: I hereby
apologize; The committee hereby thanks you. In hedged performatives, the verb is
present but the speech act is performed indirectly: In saying I must apologize for my
behavior, the speaker is expressing an obligation to make an apology, but implies that
the acknowledgement of that obligation is the same as an apology. In contrast, I
apologized is a report, and Must I apologize? is a request for advice."
(S. Greenbaum, The Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1992)
Also Known As: performative process