performative

CEFRB2

/pəˈrfɔrmətɪv/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
adjective
Done as part of performing or intended to create an effect through words.
02
adjective
Extra detail
A performative utterance.

Examples

It's entirely performative, if you ask me.
Will Tebboune be forced into performative politics?

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 4
Parts of speech: 1
Citations: 5
Synonyms: 3

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance one's reputation.
Being enacted as it is said.

More examples

In context

Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.
We were beginning to suspect that her ethical qualms were sometimes performative, as the urgent need for fairness and justice seemed to apply to some people but not to others.
Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage. Here 'saying' is used in the sense in which it takes inverted commas and is using words or language, a phatic and not[…]

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

Many critics said the actor's emotional speech was blank and lacked real feeling.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage. Here 'saying' is used in the sense in which it takes inverted commas and is using words or language, a phatic and not[…]
1975 April 15, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition, Harvard University Press, →ISBN
Although the seeming copycat nature of the plots in Port Huran and Conyers was terrifying because of their repetitive, performative, even texted nature—their seeming theatricality—more harrowing was the threat that, like theater, the performance would settle quickly into repetition compulsions in schools across the nation.
2002, Anthony Kubiak, Agitated States: Performance in the American Theater of Cruelty, →ISBN, page 4
With the danger of science becoming purely “performative” (Lyotard 1984), not seeking any pretense of “truth” but simply performing a service for those in charge while still occupying its decision-making role in a technocratically dominated political sphere […]
2013, Martha McCaughey, Michael D. Ayers, Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, page 200
The Harambe meme soon became the perfect parody of the sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western liberal performative politics and the online mass hysteria that often characterized it.
2017, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN, Introduction
The reality of remote working has turned out to be different. Days have become longer and employees are demonstratively visible. Work has become more performative.
2022 January 8, “The rise of performative work”, in The Economist, →ISSN

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Origin

adjective

From perform + -ative.

Deep Dive

adjective

More examples

Related

Quick test

Many critics said the actor's emotional speech was blank— and lacked real feeling.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

Many critics said the actor's emotional speech was blank and lacked real feeling.