Performance as the category of a cultural-analytical linguistic

This article discusses the question of how the concept of performance can be made fruitful in the framework of linguistics. Defining features of the concept of performance in cultural studies are reconstructed, and on this basis it is shown that linguistic research traditions can profitably be brought into connection with the debate in cultural studies both with respect to their research interests and to their theoretical assumptions. After making a distinction between two types of linguistics: that with a language-theoretical interest and that with a culturally oriented interest in performance, the article discusses the usefulness that a performative perspective on verbal interaction can have in understanding cultural change and to what extent this perspective can cause a transformation in the objects of linguistic study.