Roses are red, violets are blue

discourses of nature and the illusion of the constative in YouTube comments about Erika Hilton

Abstract

This paper illustrates and analyzes what I call discourses of nature, a set of utterances that, performatively, create the effect of merely describing a universal, intrinsic reality external to language. This concept is grounded in Michel Foucault’s (2008) notion of discourse and is here related to the distinction between constative and performative utterances proposed by J. L. Austin (1990) at the outset of his philosophical investigation into speech acts (and later abandoned). The analysis focuses on how 11 YouTube comments on a video about congresswoman Erika Hilton construct their truth effects, advocating for a supposedly universal truth about the world while articulating transphobic remarks that invalidate the politician’s gender identity. The study reinforces the argument that every utterance is, in fact, performative, and that understanding language as performance is a fundamental condition for a production of knowledge that is politically and ethically committed to what it produces, as well as for an Applied Linguistics that takes Pragmatics seriously.