Shouting Your Pronouns in a Crowded Theater
This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire
By Dave Barfield
Real Clear Wire
The following is a condensed version of “Shouting Your Pronouns in a Crowded Theater” by Dave Barfield, published at Law & Liberty.
Let’s try out a thought experiment. Imagine you’re in a crowded theater and someone yells, “Fire!” What happens? People flee the room in a panic. Rightly so. Now let me change the question slightly. When someone yells, “Fire!” what happens linguistically?
According to philosopher J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory in his influential book How to Do Things with Words, three things occur: locution,
