Illocutionary Acts And Sentence Meaning May 2026

Alston expands on the work of J.L. Austin and John Searle, categorizing illocutionary acts into five primary types:

Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning by William P. Alston Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning

Alston’s central thesis is that for a sentence to have a particular meaning is for it to be to perform illocutionary acts of a matching type. Alston expands on the work of J

The broader framework of speech-act theory, which Alston refines, identifies three distinct layers of an utterance: which Alston refines

'ing). When a speaker utters a sentence, they take responsibility for certain conditions being true (e.g., in a request to open a window, the speaker is responsible for the condition that the window is actually closed). Taxonomy of Speech Acts