Speech acts (Linguistics) (Topical Term)

SIL Glossary of linguistic terms, June 1, 2018 (Speech act: an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance, including the following: A general act (illocutionary act) that a speaker performs, analyzable as including: the uttering of words (utterance acts); making reference and predicating (propositional acts); and, a particular intention in making the utterance (illocutionary force); An act involved in the illocutionary act, including utterance acts and propositional acts; The production of a particular effect in the addressee (perlocutionary act))

Oxford Research Encyclopedias of Linguistics (online), June 1, 2018 (Speech Act: Speech acts are acts that can, but need not, be carried out by saying and meaning that one is doing so. Many view speech acts as the central units of communication, with phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of an utterance serving as ways of identifying whether the speaker is making a promise, a prediction, a statement, or a threat)

Britannica.com, June 1, 2018 (Speech act theory: Theory of meaning that holds that the meaning of linguistic expressions can be explained in terms of the rules governing their use in performing various speech acts, e.g., admonishing, asserting, commanding, exclaiming, promising, questioning, requesting, warning. In contrast to theories that maintain that linguistic expressions have meaning in virtue of their contribution to the truth conditions of sentences where they occur, it explains linguistic meaning in terms of the use of words and sentences in the performance of speech acts)