performative

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Being enacted as it is said.

   • Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.
   • Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage. Here 'saying' is used in the sense in which it takes inverted commas and is using words or language, a phatic and not[…]
2. 2

   Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous

   Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance one's reputation.

   • We were beginning to suspect that her ethical qualms were sometimes performative, as the urgent need for fairness and justice seemed to apply to some people but not to others.
3. 3

   A performative utterance.

   • The distinction between constatives and performatives is one of the distinctions that he starts questioning.

The neighborhood

• synonymperformatory
• synonymworkly
• synonymillocutionary
• neighborpreformative
• neighborpreformance
• neighborpreform