 Performative utterance  Austin contrasted between statements, traditionally considered as the only utterances with any philosophical importance, with performative utterances that would not be considered as being true or false, and rather than merely saying something are better considered as acts of doing something. He further distinguished between explicit and implicit performative utterances. The first are those whose main verb, called ‘performative verb,’ makes explicit the particular act that the speaker is performing in producing the utterance. These verbs usually present a canonical form: (in English) the first person singular in the present active, or the second person of the passive. Not all implicit performative utterances can be made explicit through a performative utterance. Following Austin’s discussion, all utterances end up being performative, so that the contrast between them and statements seems to make no sense any more. The concept of performative utterance was supplanted in the development of speech act theory by the concept of speech act.