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Meta Treks: A Star Trek Philosophy Podcast

Meta Treks is a Trek.fm podcast dedicated to a deep examination of the philosophical ideas found in Star Trek. In each episode, Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison take you on a fascinating journey into the inner workings of Star Trek storytelling, deeper into subspace than you've ever traveled before.
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Meta Treks: A Star Trek Philosophy Podcast
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Now displaying: Category: Linguistics
Jun 20, 2016

Speech Acts and Performative Utterances. 

In this episode of Meta Treks, hosts Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison discuss the philosophical and linguistic issues of speech acts and performative utterances. Many different kinds of speech acts can be found inside Star Trek, including taking oaths and granting promotions, saying wedding vows and pronouncing marriages, naming androids and christening starships, auto-destruct commands, replicator orders, and transfers of command, to name a few. Zachary and Mike discuss different examples of performative utterances in Star Trek and the role they play in a free society.  In addition, Zachary and Mike consider objections to the concepts of speech acts and performative utterances from the philosophical standpoints of relativism and reductionism. 

Chapters
Welcome to Episode 31 (00:01:23)
What are Speech Acts and Performative Utterances? (00:02:25)
Wedding Vows in Star Trek (00:12:32)
Speech Acts and Cultural Relativism (00:25:25)
Klingons and Ritual Storytelling (00:29:24)
Promotions and Transfers of Command (00:32:35)
Does Reductionism Undermine the Concept of Speech Acts? (00:35:30)
The Importance of Speech Acts in a Free Society (00:43:42)
Finding the Essentials in Promotions and Pageantry (00:47:32)
Christening the Enterprise - The Strange Act of Naming (00:50:34)
Oaths and Voting as Speech Acts (00:54:04)
Auto-Destruct Commands (01:01:24)
"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" - Creating Reality with Words (01:03:43)
Final Thoughts (01:10:41) 

Hosts
Zachary Fruhling and Mike Morrison 

Production
Mike Morrison (Editor and Producer) Norman C. Lao (Executive Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Charlynn Schmiedt (Executive Producer) Patrick Devlin (Associate Producer) Kay Elizabeth Janeway (Associate Producer) Will Nguyen (Content Manager) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) 

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