There are moments when the act of saying something is the thing that makes it happen. There are some serious heavy hitters to consider:
- a judge saying, “I sentence you to life”
- the officiant saying, “I now pronounce you married”
- sorcerers saying “abracadabra!” (or the possible Aramaic original אברא כדברא, Abra K’davra — “I create as I speak”)
On these occasions, speech isn’t just hot air or describing the weather. This speech is a pressed launch button; an proclaimed formal decree; an act of actual power. When such words are spoken aloud it is reality itself that echoes. So… what’s the right word for those words?
Well obviously I went digging. Just get itchy like that sometimes, I do. Somewhere in our shared meta-lingual hyperfield a.k.a. chatbots & web searches, I sought whatever noun-lemma-thing that definitively, English-language-ly, captures the idea of “Word as Deed” …though I could’ve sworn we already had one. But I found something else: a steaming disaster of ill-fated scholarly branding that has probably confused people for 70+ years. Even worse is that it probably is the term I remembered — I just didn’t remember it being this terrible.
So, the Old Guard Said So
Right, so: J.L. Austin. Illustrious midcentury philosopher of language (beautiful title btw). Best known for developing the theory of “speech acts” (yes, exactly this, yes). Left us the well-known posthumous opus “How to Do Things with Words” (that’s what I’m talking about). Dude was a linguistic pragmatist, was big talkin’ up O.L.P. which means Ordinary Language Philosophy btw, and finally formalized the objectively-correct opinion that not all speech is merely for describing or communicating — some speech does things (YES, THANK YOU). Great start!
Man couldn’t stick the friggin’ landing though. His chosen term for this world-altering, nigh-magical power of speech? “Performative Utterance.” Wow ok. Bit underwhelming. Distinct lack of whelm there.
It’s clunky. It’s overly academic and uninspired. It’s two mul-ti-syl-lab-ic words when one should do. Also, it’s downright confusing, isn’t it? Admittedly no one could predict that “performative” would increase in usage by over 100 times since 1960 (the year Austin died), and mutate into what is essentially an insult. “Performative” now suggests empty virtue signaling or faking something for online likes. It’s more like “fake it till you make it”, when it should be the real deal… make it.
But wait! It gets worse maybe? Austin later refined his limited initial ‘performative utterances’ idea and framed it as the middle of three levels, an analysis now called Speech Act Theory:
- Locutionary Act: the noises one makes from one’s face-hole
- Illocutionary Force: the actual intent and purpose (informing, ordering, promising, spellcasting, etc).
- Perlocutionary Effect: the impact had on listeners
“Illocutionary?” Sorry, at least it’s a unique word, and I should be grateful, yet instead I must say oof. Oof, I say. The thing smacks of academic jargogling at its worst — high-on-its-own-supply terminology that gatekeeps a concept which everyone understands intuitively. It needs the whole system to even make sense. Somehow it’s more forgettable, too. A word like that was never going to see wide adoption. Respect to J.L. Austin, but for a language guy I expected you would’ve appreciated words more…
Uh oh. Maybe you had hoped to. You were a meticulous perfectionist who died unexpectedly before you could finish your greatest work. That rough draft made its way into the groundwater, and is still somehow quite highly-regarded. Kind of wish I hadn’t so deeply dunked on your aesthetics there, bud.
How bout I illocutionarily concede I only did it to make a particular point. (Reader, you may perlocutionarily decide if the point is made.)
Then There Was the Word
Right, so: we probably don’t need three confusing stuffy overly-similar tongue-twisters to describe the power of words. We need one useful word that clearly indicates what it is. We need a word that might gain traction outside specialized analytical contexts and find broad appeal. Maybe even a word that’s kinda cool? We need:
“Actiloquy”
Derived from the Latin Actus (action/deed) and Loqui (to speak), it is exactly what it hopefully sounds like: Action-Speech. The Spoken Deed. Say + Do.
The beauty of “actiloquy” is that it feels native to English speakers before they even open a dictionary. It shares a rhythmic and etymological DNA with “soliloquy,” a word common enough you might’ve been quizzed on it in high school. While a soliloquy is a speech of isolation, turning inward to the self, an actiloquy is a speech of projection, turning outward to the world.
You may have heard of “somniloquy”, for talking in one’s sleep, or “colloquy” for a formal conversation, and of course honorable mentions “eloquent”, “loquacious”, and even “grandiloquent.” Mm, good stuff. Meanwhile we also have active, acting, actress, actuator, actionable, activity, transaction, interaction, activation, actuary, and actual, which are pretty solid words in English as well.
This intuitiveness can bridge the mental gap between the sacred and the bureaucratic. It forms a linguistic umbrella that covers the “so mote it be” of a pagan ceremony, the “presto change-o” of a kid’s magic show, or the “I accept the offer” of an employment contract. When a CEO says “you’re fired,” the employment contract is severed; the social reality has been altered instantaneously via actiloquy. This conceptual framing acknowledges that these are all the same mechanic: a switch flipped by human voice. It is closer the original and unrefined performative utterance.
Austin’s illocutionary act tries to get at this, but feels far too cerebral, too focused on the speaker’s internal intention. Actiloquy shifts the focus outward. It suggests a kinetic weight and importance, that action is inherent to the word’s definition… as befitting its intending meaning. It is no longer mired in Austin’s locational metaphors of within versus beyond the speech, however analytically useful they might be.
Yet a word isn’t better merely because it’s more intuitive, or familiar-ish, nor because it’s less worse than the alternatives. Actiloquy is more than that — though you might not guess why. The particular subject of the word touches on phenomena which mystics and legal scholars have had to contend for millennia: the effect of spoken language isn’t just in the meaning of the words, but in the physical, enacted, momentary event of their release.
There is the Japanese concept of Kotodama, the “soul of language”, where words aren’t just labels slapped onto objects but an influence on the object itself. This aligns strangely well with the Neoplatonist Iamblichus and his defense of magical “barbarous names” for ritual use — that an incantation’s power didn’t lie in understanding the words, but instead in the sound itself. In the modern era we could connect these ideas to the famed Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativity, where a language’s structures directly affect a speaker’s perceptions. It is said that a specific acoustic key unlocks a specific meaningful door. Well, why wouldn’t it?
Actiloquy sounds good. It just does. Try it out; maybe you’ll like it. When a priest consecrates the host it is actiloquy. An officer gives an order, and that is actiloquy. When mom tells you “it’s bedtime now”, you better believe that is actiloquy. An ancient and sophisticated linguistic device, a sonic weapon, the power of The Word: actiloquy.
Not the Final Word
Language is supposed to evolve to serve the people who use it, not the other way around. We aren’t all meant to be burdened with “Illocutionary Force” just because a guy at Oxford in 1955 hadn’t come up with something catchier yet. People need a word that acknowledges speech that’s a force of change. You need it.
Whether you are swearing an oath, casting a spell, or borrowing a few bucks from a friend, you aren’t merely talking. You are very much engaging in actiloquy… that is, unless you come up with a better word for it.
Let’s ask one last question, then. What is needed to make such a word real? Using it. Understanding it. Telling people that it is real and treating it the same, certainly. But there is a also a more direct, more relevant, more obvious way…
Hereby, “actiloquy” is now a thing. I have spoken. Thanks 🙂