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Ordinary Language Philosophy & Literary Studies Online

Ordinary language philosophy and genre theory: Brisbane notes

Last month's symposium in Brisbane brought together philosophers, literary critics, and postgraduates to examine what ordinary language philosophy (OLP) can contribute to genre debates. The three-day meeting, hosted by the University of Queensland and the Australasian Association of Philosophy, attracted speakers from across Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and North America. While OLP and genre theory have occasionally intersected in journals such as Philosophical Investigations and Textual Practice, sustained cross-disciplinary conversation has been rare. The Brisbane gathering aimed to remedy that gap, and the proceedings, to be published later this year, should offer a substantial resource for scholars working at the seam between linguistic analysis and literary form.

The programme reflected the diversity of the field. Plenary lectures addressed Wittgenstein's remarks on family resemblance, J. L. Austin's theory of performative utterances, and Stanley Cavell's readings of Shakespeare and cinema. Parallel panels considered how genre functions as a classificatory tool, whether genres have essences or merely polythetic criteria, and what role ordinary speakers play in stabilising generic categories. Several Australian contributors connected these philosophical concerns to local debates in literary studies, including the resurgence of interest in settler colonial narratives and the contested category of nature writing in the work of authors like Tim Winton.

Wittgensteinian underpinnings of genre

The opening plenary set the conceptual tone. Drawing on Wittgenstein's discussion of games in the Philosophical Investigations, the speaker argued that genres resemble family resemblance concepts: collections whose members share overlapping similarities without any single feature common to all. Sonnet, ballad, and villanelle may each count as a lyric poem via different pathways, just as Wittgenstein's examples — chess, tennis, ring-a-ring-a-roses — are linked by criss-crossing similarities rather than a definitional core.

Several respondents noted that Wittgenstein's notion of language-games suggests genres are not static taxonomies but practices governed by rules embedded in forms of life. This framing resonates with debates about how to classify Michelle de Kretser's fiction, which blurs satire and social realism.

Austin, speech acts, and literary form

The second day turned from classificatory to performative questions. A panel on J. L. Austin explored how his distinction between constative and performative utterances might illuminate literary genres that are themselves forms of doing. A marriage contract is performative; so, in some sense, is a sonnet sequence that ritually enacts courtship, or a detective story that performs the conventions of deduction. Genre, on this view, is not merely described by language but enacted through it.

Participants noted that Austin's later work on infelicities — the conditions under which performative utterances fail — offers a vocabulary for thinking about genre subversion. When a postmodern novel deliberately violates realist conventions, it commits what one speaker called a generic infelicity that nonetheless succeeds in producing literary meaning.

Cavell, perfectionism, and the ordinary

Stanley Cavell's contribution was the subject of an entire panel, organised in part by researchers from the Australian National University in Canberra who have been developing Cavell-inspired readings of Australian cinema and theatre. Cavell's notion of perfectionism — the continual orientation of the self toward its better possibilities — was linked to his reading of genres as sites of ordinary aspiration and disappointment. Tragedy is not simply a narrative structure; it is a way of reckoning with what Cavell calls the ordinary in human life.

A lively exchange followed a paper that applied Cavell's reading of The Winter's Tale to recent Australian stage productions, including the Bell Shakespeare Company's 2024 tour. A discussant from Melbourne argued that local productions often inflect the play's redemptive arc with distinctly Australian accents, raising questions about whether genre is ever fully separable from the idioms of the community that practises it.

Genre trouble in Australian literary studies

A roundtable brought the discussion home to the Australian context. Participants considered how genre categories function within local publishing, the major prizes such as the Miles Franklin and the Stella Prize, and university curricula. One scholar observed that Australian literature has long been haunted by the bush ballad and the question of how to classify works that neither celebrate nor simply reject that inheritance.

Another speaker drew attention to the role of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) in shaping what counts as a legitimate object of literary study. The classification of a text within a recognised genre affects how it can be taught and examined within the regulated framework of Australian higher education.

Pedagogy and the next generation

The final day focused on teaching. A workshop demonstrated how ordinary language analysis can be taught alongside close reading. Students brought passages from Australian novels and examined the moves through which genre cues are signalled: titles, opening sentences, paratextual framing.

Several early-career researchers reported on work-in-progress that combines OLP with genre analysis. One project examines how the conventions of literary memoir have shifted in the works of writers like Raimond Gaita; another explores the generic indeterminacy of true-crime podcasts produced in regional Queensland. The session underscored the importance of sustaining institutional support for postgraduate research through the Australian Research Council's Discovery and DECRA schemes.

Open questions and future directions

In the closing session, participants identified several questions that the Brisbane meeting had opened but not resolved. Is genre best understood as a Wittgensteinian concept, an Austin-style speech act, or something that requires Cavell's account of the ordinary? How should the framework accommodate digital and born-digital forms, from interactive fiction to long-form podcasts? And how can Australian scholars contribute to, rather than merely import, debates that have largely been conducted in the Anglo-American and Continental traditions?

The organisers announced plans for a follow-up symposium in Melbourne in 2026, with a working group to be coordinated through https://olponline.org/. Papers from the Brisbane meeting will be solicited for a special issue, and a bibliography of OLP and genre scholarship will be maintained on the site.

Practical avenues for further reading

For those wishing to pursue the threads opened at Brisbane, several resources stand out:

Readers are warmly invited to share responses, contribute to the ongoing bibliography, or propose future panels through the OLP & Literary Studies Online contact page. The Brisbane symposium made clear that the conversation between ordinary language philosophy and genre theory is only beginning.