Managing Performative Models

Performative Verbs and Performative Acts

Searle (1989) posits a set of adequacy criteria for any account of the meaning and use of performative verbs, such as order or promise. Central among them are: (a) performative utterances are performances of the act named by the performative verb; (b) performative utterances are self-verifying; (c) performative utterances achieve (a) and (b) in virtue of their literal meaning. He then argues th...

Performative Framing: Dza Patrul Rinpoche’s Performative Pedagogy

This essay explores the pedagogy of Dza Patrul Rinpoche (1808–1887), a well-respected Buddhist teacher from Eastern Tibet, by considering examples where Patrul frames his teachings as oratorical performances. Patrul operates under the guiding pedagogical principle that self-promoting performance is good teaching. The term “performance” describes the competitive exchanges that appear in certain ...

Performative faces

The paper presents a model for the construction of an artificial agent that can express performatives through facial expression. The performative of a speech act or communicative act is the particular communicative intention a Sender has to one's Addressee, the way one wants to socially relate oneself to the interlocutor. Performatives are decomposed both on the meaning and on the signal side: ...

Formalising Performative Interaction

In this paper we attempt to formalise some of the basic attributes of performative interaction against a background of sociological analysis in order to better understand how computer interfaces may support performance. We show how this generic formalisation can be used in the deconstruction, analysis and understanding of performative action and more broadly in live performance. Two examples of...

Managing Multiple Models