Representing the Act: Records and Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory was developed in the twentieth century by the philosophers J. L. Austin and John Searle. This paper provides a brief introduction to the theory and then explores some aspects of it that seem relevant to concepts in archival science, particularly connections between speech act theory and a conceptualisation of records as persistent representations. The paper focuses on ideas about the role of representation in the performance of speech acts, the potential impact of speech act theory on perceptions of the record, and the importance of societal conventions in understanding the affinities of records to human action. It argues that records have performative characteristics and that, by potentially offering a middle way between the extremes of objectivist and interpretivist views, speech act theory can help us to comprehend relations between records, actions and events.