Entry #4 : TED Speech Acts

Video retrieved  from TED Ed . Last visited: May 30th, 2020. Available at:  https://ed.ted.com/lessons/speech-acts-constative-and-performative-colleen-glenney-boggs#watch

Speech acts: constative and performative 

Austin was one of the most influential philosophers of his time and he developed a theory of speech acts (constative and performatives). Constatives are sentences that describe something as true or false, while performatives are sentences that denote an action. Furthermore, performatives are sentences that inspire actions while constatives just contain a message. When words become actions it is a speech act (like ordering, apologising, warning, etc). However, there is a difference. And this lies on the fact that performatives depende on "felicity conditions". Felicity conditions are the rules under which a performative can be an acting. Performatives should be authoritative, understood, clear and able to be executed. But this does not mean that if the performative has all these conditions it can be followed.

Metacognitive analysis

While I was watching the first seconds of the video I started to think that it was not going to work and I thought I was not going to understand what it was talking about. But then as the seconds passed, I could see that with the pictures and cartoons and explanations the video has, the understanding was going to be easier. In my opinion, whenever a video can show clear examples or pictures so we as watchers can observe, it is much easier to understan what it is describing or explaining and I even find it more useful.