Page 11

Vanhooze

Is There Meaning in This Text

, 252.

5
The "ordinary language" philosophy of language spawned by J. L. Austin and John R. Searle describe human

utterances this way and Morland is one who applies Austin

's categories to
Galatians
studies.
See

J. L. Austin,
How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered At Harward University in 1955
(Cambridge: Clarendon, 1975), 121
, William P. Alston, Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 32-49
and
Kjell Arne
Morland,
The Rhetoric of Curse in Galatians
: Paul Confronts Another Gospel
(Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press),
16-7.

It is no surprise that the deconstructionist Derrida looked rather unfavorably on Austin
's theory and method of analyzing human utterances as performatives. His key objection is against there being

any shared consciousness between author and reader that does not allow for significant residue to escape in the
process of communication. Austin granted that communication contains infelicities or failures in the communication or
reception of performative utterances. However, just because these infelicities are possible, it does not mean that
knowledge of the author

's intent is impossible or even improbable. Derrida himself assumes that he can be understood in

communicating that human utterances are frought with infelicities. One just needs to be honest with the boundaries
given the reader in the context of the performative. Some qualifications are not the thousand qualifications which cause
the death of Austin

's method. Derrida unfairly passes knowledge of authorial intent as a philosophical ideal. Jacques Derrida,

"Signature Event Context,"

The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present
, Second Edition, edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin
's, 2001), 1484-90. See also Vanhoozer,
Is There Meaning in This Text?
, 211-14 for a summary of the Derrida-Searle debate, which summarizes Derrida
's weaknesses in attacking speech act theory. Another way of saying what has been argued above is the

deconstructionist commits the black and white fallacy by arguing that communication either contains absolute certainty
or utter skepticism.

John R. Searle,
Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language