speech actsconcentric scheme with the sacred center in the village, dance plazas,
shrines, sacred flat-topped hills, and sacred mountains. Beyond the
mountains is profane space, whereas horizontal space corresponds to the
levels of being of the culture and vertical space represents three cosmic
levels: below, middle, and above. The below and above are like the mid-
dle. This is a cosmos born from its center and expanding outwards.Further reading: Eliade (1959); Ortiz (1969)SPEECH ACTS
This notion is elucidated by the philosopher J. L. Austin in his book How
to Do Things with Words and is developed further by John Searle in his
work Speech Acts. Performative language, which involves uttering words,
is directly connected to the doing of an action. In other words, perfomative
language makes something happen when it is verbally expressed. If a gov-
ernor of a state cuts a ribbon across a highway that runs over a bridge, and
proclaims, for instance, “I now declare this bridge open,” the bridge is open
and cars can now pass over it. Austin develops a threefold classification of
speech acts: the locutionary act of saying something with a certain sense
and reference, for example, the act of saying, “the automobile is not run-
ning,” with reference to a particular auto; the illocutionary act of doing
something in the act of saying something, for example, in saying, “Start the
auto,” a person performs the act of giving an order; and, finally, the perlo-
cutionary act of accomplishing something by the act of saying, for exam-
ple, “Turn the engine off.” There are also certain conditions that are
necessary for a performative utterance to be successful, which include an
accepted conventional procedure and result within a certain context. The
persons and circumstances must be appropriate for the invocation of the
particular procedure utilized. A final criterion involves the complete and
correct execution of the procedure by all participants.
Austin’s theory of performative utterance is criticized by Jacques
Derrida, a postmodern philosopher, because Austin does not consider a
pre-existing system of predicates that Derrida calls graphematics. Derrida
claims that Austin also blurs the differences between original event-utter-
ances and citational utterances because Austin misses the iterable marks
that introduce a split into the utterance. In addition, Derrida claims that
the utterance can never be completely determinable because it is neces-
sary for conscious intention to be present and immediately apparent to