Speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. The contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's discovery of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating.
Read more about Speech Act: Locutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts, Illocutionary Acts, Indirect Speech Acts, History, In Language Development, In Computer Science
Famous quotes containing the words speech and/or act:
“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)
“In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)