Problem of ritual interpretation in J. Austins speech act theory

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the possibility of application of J. Austin's speech act theory to the phenomenonof ritual, its significance and preferences, limitations and probable problems. At first, we examine J. Austin's interpretation of theterm "ritual", and it is most broad: a ritual is a conventional speech act. On the one hand, this interpretation allows examining a ritual bymeans of the main categories of the speech act theory. On the other hand, in this case almost any communication act is a ritual, and itreduces specification of this phenomenon, and often it does not satisfy the researcher's aims, which are outside the sphere of linguistics.Therefore, specification of this category is necessary. A ritual, as J. Austin interprets, is a performative, which has the following importantproperties for specification: firstly, its interpretation by means of the categories "truth" and "lie" is impossible, successfulness is themain characteristic of a performative; secondly, a performative is equal to an action, and it means that an utterance is the act's realizationat the same time. So we can estimate any ritual act by two criteria: its successfulness and structure correctness. As a result, the generalritual's plan includes four categories: intention, conditions, word and act. The last two categories form the ritual's structure, but aritual can be non-verbal. And a ritual will work only in one case, when there is synthesis of all the four categories. Then we single outthree criteria of successfulness for a new ritual's interpretation. Firstly, it is achievement of a social convention. Secondly, it is communicationwith the transcendental, which cannot be tested or analysed. Thirdly, it is a realization of a definite transition from one conditionto another. And this transition can be explicit or implicit. Thus, we can fix two main problems, which appear as a result of interpretationof a ritual as a speech act: firstly, non-explicated communication with the transcendental and implicit changes as a ritual's result;secondly, existence of rituals, which do not imply other communication than the transcendental one (and this communication can benon-convention). Thereby these results allow giving a new understanding of a well-established category "ritual" and, therefore, anotherlevel of hermeneutic interpretation. But at the same time these explications of a ritual as a performative impose restrictions, such ascomplication in defining the category "ritual", interpretations of non-verbal rituals and introduction of sacral essence to the structure ofritual communication.

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