Speech act

A speech act is an utterance considered as an action, such as promising, requesting, or declaring. Its force depends on what is said, the speaker’s intention, and the circumstances of speaking.

Locutionary act: The act of producing an utterance with a particular linguistic form and meaning. It captures the words and literal meaning that form one layer of a speech act.
Performative utterance: An utterance that performs an action by being spoken, such as naming a ship or making a promise. It shows how speaking can directly constitute an action.
J. L. Austin: A British philosopher whose lectures established the modern study of performative language and speech acts. Austin introduced the distinction between saying something and doing something in saying it.
Pragmatics: The study of how context shapes meaning in language use. Speech-act theory is a central account of meaning as action in context.
Semantic meaning: The conventional meaning encoded by linguistic expressions and their combinations. Speech-act force can differ even when an utterance’s semantic meaning stays fixed.
Illocutionary act: The act performed in saying something, such as asserting, promising, or ordering. It names the action a speaker performs through an utterance.
Explicit performative: A performative utterance that names its act with a verb, as in “I apologize.” Its verb makes the intended illocutionary act overt.
How to Do Things with Words: J. L. Austin’s posthumously published lectures on performative utterances and speech acts. This book presents the foundational lectures behind the concept.
Conversation analysis: The empirical study of how people organize social interaction through conversation. Its analyses track how requests, offers, and other acts shape turn-by-turn interaction.
Implicature: Meaning conveyed indirectly through an utterance rather than encoded in its literal wording. An implicature is inferred content, whereas a speech act is an action performed in speaking.

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