J. L. Austin (John Langshaw Austin, March 26, 1911 – February 8, 1960) was a prominent British philosopher and a leading figure in ordinary language philosophy. He studied and taught at Oxford University, where he developed his influential theory of speech acts, arguing that language is not merely descriptive but also performative. His seminal work, How to Do Things with Words, introduced the concepts of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, and distinguished between performative and constative utterances. Austin's meticulous analysis of everyday language challenged traditional philosophical approaches and had a lasting impact on linguistics, philosophy of language, law, and literary theory. He died of lung cancer at age 48.
