@quinn So the work of theirs I've read (and oh gosh it's been a bit and I don't have refs handy) focuses specifically on speech acts and performativity, and they were wildly influential in both--citations everywhere. There's a really fun sociolinguistics book by Barrett called "from drag queens to leathermen" whose opening chapter gives what I (a total layperson) think is a good summary of performativity--when I read that it really helped solidify the concept for me.
@aphyr amazing, thank you! That sounds like exactly the sort of thing I've been interested in lately 😊