Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Relating to or being an utterance that asserts or states something that can be judged as true or false, such as
- noun A constative utterance, such as an assertion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective linguistics Pertaining to an
utterance relayinginformation and likely to be regarded astrue orfalse .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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This seems like a simple statement, what the linguistic philosopher J.L. Austin termed a constative utterance: a base level of communication, with no metaphor or secondary meanings attached.
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Austin had earlier (1956) initiated the development of speech act taxonomy by means of the distinction between constative and performative utterances.
Him 2009
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However, when developing his general theory of speech acts, Austin abandoned the constative/performative distinction, the reason being that it is not so clear in what sense something is done e.g. by means of an optative utterance, expressing a wish, whereas nothing is done by means of an assertoric one.
Him 2009
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Assertion, by contrast, is the paradigm of a constative utterance.
Him 2009
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Yet precisely because it is neither simply prescriptive nor descriptive, neither purely constative nor performative, heil risks rendering the
Patriot Acts: The Political Language of Henrich von Kleist 2006
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As inhabitants of modernity we might, however, first and foremost associate the “lost one” of patriotic melancholy with the nation state, that which paradoxically can never be lost, if patriotism has any constative or performative value to it.
Introduction 2006
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All texts are events, even when largely constative.
History against Historicism, Formal Matters, and the Event of the Text: De Man with Benjamin 2005
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In linguistic terms, these two poles are aligned with the constative and the performative, the latter being not quite identical with the expressive, since that category assumes a certain interiority which is not requisite for the performative.
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At stake in this description is the very interruption of cognitive and performative language that de Man explains will emerge in the book itself — i.e., the interruption of the difference between a book about romanticism (cognitive, constative) and a book of romanticism and its disruption
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(Austin presents the distinction between performative and constative utterances.)
Pragmatics Korta, Kepa 2006
whichbe commented on the word constative
Capable of being true or false. (from Phrontistery)
May 25, 2008