A speech act is a spoken or written utterance that functions as an action — promising, ordering, declaring, questioning — rather than merely describing a state of affairs. Parameters: (1) locutionary act (the act of saying something with phonetic, propositional, and illocutionary force), (2) illocutionary force (the action performed in saying, e.g., promising, commanding, declaring), (3) perlocutionary effect (the effect achieved by saying, e.g., persuading, deterring). Persistence: maintained through language, taught in linguistics and philosophy of language, and sustained by social practice and institutional conventions. [formal: actus loquendi | substrate: behavior | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
speech-act
A speech act is a spoken or written utterance that functions as an action — promising, ordering, declaring, questioning — rather than merely describing a state of affairs. Parameters: (1) locutionary act (the act of saying something with p…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A speech act is a human-made linguistic construct from pragmatics and philosophy of language, classifying utterances not by what they describe but by what they DO — promising, ordering, declaring, questioning — as actions performed through language.
Names and aliases
- speech-acten · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrc6dopv00jba9g4op1ivbb1INSTANCE_OF →
speech-act IS a specific kind of communication — an utterance that performs an action (asserting, commanding, promising). Law 9: specific→general. Searle's speech-act theory classifies them as utterance-types that communicate via illocutionary force.
Relations to this entry
- cmrmprtzd019qd1nlgcg3xzc8← INSTANCE_OF
curse IS a specific kind of speech-act — a performative utterance (specifically, an imprecating one) that carries illocutionary force. speech-act is the nearest kind: more specific than communication, more precise than act. Law 9: specific→general.
- cmrmrzww201kjd1nlwfz8yutw← INSTANCE_OF
Testimony IS a specific kind of speech-act — an assertive utterance made under obligation or authority (legal, scholarly, ceremonial). Speech-act is the nearest general kind.
- cmrr48lx800mhq89dci7jcw6j← INSTANCE_OF
Direction tested: INSTANCE_OF (specific→general). Sarcasm is a specific kind of speech act — it uses the mechanism of saying something while meaning its opposite, serving a particular communicative function. A competent speaker would call sarcasm 'a type of speech act.' Files against nearest kind.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 21, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC
- Content hash
- a3d76643d4c9dbe682037d65c83258d3df3a6817adaea34415bf3b079190c906