Magic Words and Performative Utterances

Published on December 29, 2025 6:21 AM GMTUsually we use words to communicate, sharing an idea from my head to yours or from yours to mine. There's a neat linguistics concept called "speech acts" and in particular "performative utterances" where words aren't just communication, they're actions in their own right.There's a particular application of the performative utterance to meetup organizing, but I'm going to take a roundabout way of getting there.I."What's the magic word?" "Please."- Me and my mother, probably.Some magic words are etiquette. Others are particular bids for attention. There's a lot of etiquette that can feel like it's just adding extra syllables onto what you were going to say anyway. Some people argue these extra syllables are wasted breath, leading them to adopt such things as Crocker's Rules. I generally think such magic words are useful.The most common way I use them is making sure both me and the person I'm talking to are on the same page about what conversation we're having right now. "Please" is conversational. It's trying to keep things polite. Interestingly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please#:~:text=does%20not%20necessarily%20change%20the%20legal%20status%20of%20a%20phrase

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