A classification of illocutionary acts
Abstract
There are at least a dozen linguistically significant dimensions of differences between illocutionary acts. Of these, the most important are illocutionary point, direction of fit, and expressed psychological state. These three form the basis of a taxonomy of the fundamental classes of illocutionary acts. The five basic kinds of illocutionary acts are: representatives (or assertives), directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Each of these notions is defined. An earlier attempt at constructing a taxonomy by Austin is defective for several reasons, especially in its lack of clear criteria for distinguishing one kind of illocutionary force from another. Paradigm performative verbs in each of the five categories exhibit different syntactical properties. These are explained. (Speech acts, Austin's taxonomy, functions of speech, implications for ethnography and ethnology; English.)
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A framework based on speech act word clues proposed by Qadir and Riloff (2011), who further developed Searle's (1976) word clues, was used to determine sentences for Searle's speech act classification.
“To determine the sentences to be categorized into Searle's speech act classification, a framework was developed based on speech act word clues or characteristics proposed by Qadir and Riloff (2011), who further developed speech act word clues listed by Searle (1976).”
From A SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS OF TEACHER TALK IN AN EFL CLASSROOM (2017) · cites this paper as Searle (1976)
Cites
Austin, J. L. (1975) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001 · Cited by 21,496 · see citing works
Searle, J. R. (1969) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139173438 · Cited by 11,718 · see citing works
Self-citationAustin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts
Searle, J. R. (1968) · The Philosophical Review · doi:10.2307/2183008 · Cited by 391 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Anscombe, 1957, Intention
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Client commitment language during motivational interviewing predicts drug use outcomes.
Amrhein, P. C., Miller, W. R., Yahne, C. E., Palmer, M., & Fulcher, L. (2003) · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-006x.71.5.862 · Cited by 729 · see citing works
Danet, B. (1980) · Law & Society Review · doi:10.2307/3053192 · Cited by 376 · see citing works
Liao, Q. V., Mas-ud Hussain, M., Chandar, P., Davis, M., Khazaeni, Y., Crasso, M. P., Wang, D., Muller, M., Shami, N. S., & Geyer, W. (2018) · Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3173574.3173577 · Cited by 116 · see citing works
The pragmatics of advice giving: Cross-cultural perspectives
DeCapua, A., & Dunham, J. F. (2007) · Intercultural Pragmatics · doi:10.1515/ip.2007.016 · Cited by 92 · see citing works
Enfield, N. J., & Sidnell, J. (2017) · doi:10.1017/9781139025928 · Cited by 90 · see citing works
A theoretical review of the speech act of suggesting: towards a taxonomy for its use in FLT
Martínez Flor, A. (2005) · Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses · doi:10.14198/raei.2005.18.08 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
A SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS OF TEACHER TALK IN AN EFL CLASSROOM
Basra, S. M., & Thoyyibah, L. (2017) · International Journal of Education · doi:10.17509/ije.v10i1.6848 · Cited by 75 · see citing works
“Searle, this study is categorized under the principle of qualitative research design, specifically, a case study. Geertz in Cohen (2007) pointed out that a case study has something to do with investigating how a phenomenon is like by looking closely at the case and providing a thick description explaining participants…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialLudwig, S., van Laer, T., de Ruyter, K., & Friedman, M. (2016) · Journal of Management Information Systems · doi:10.1080/07421222.2016.1205927 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
“Helping You to Pay Us”: Rapport Management in Debt Collection Call Centre Encounters
Harrington, L. (2018) · Journal of Politeness Research · doi:10.1515/pr-2018-0013 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
In conversation with Artificial Intelligence: aligning language models with human values
Kasirzadeh, A., & Gabriel, I. (2022) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2209.00731 · Cited by 128 · see citing works
A SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS: ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS PRODUCED BY TEACHER IN ESL CLASSROOM
Yulian, A. A., & Mandarani, V. (2023) · Celtic : A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics · doi:10.22219/celtic.v10i1.23276 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
Facts in the machine: Systems of record and the performance of sociotechnical truth
Hauser, E. (2025) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.24820 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
- Authors
- Searle, J. R.
- Corresponding author
- Searle, John R.
- Venue
- Language in Society
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1976-04
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-23
- ISSN
- 0047-4045 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8013
- OpenAlex
- W2097219834
- Semantic Scholar
- eb8b97867ddfb7cebdc62e35477ec09567e7c03e
- Cited by
- 3,118
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 124 · 2025: 188 · 2024: 149 · 2023: 249 · 2022: 228 · 2021: 231 · 2020: 212 · 2019: 133 · 2018: 266 · 2017: 147 · 2016: 125 · 2015: 148 · 2014: 101 · 2013: 116 · 2012: 70
- FWCI
- 111.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Language in Society (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistics and Language Analysis
- Keywords
- illocutionary acts, speech acts, illocutionary force, representatives, directives, commissive speech acts, expressive speech acts, declarations, performative verbs, direction of fit, psychological state
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
