Abstract
Abstract
Performing speech acts is one of the fundamental functions of language. Speech act has become one of the most influential concepts in pragmatics and beyond. Speech act theory was put forward by Austin and further developed by Searle in the 1960s. It has become established as one of the central theories in pragmatics. This entry will offer an overview of speech act theory by introducing and analyzing utterances of constatives and performatives, layers of speech acts (i.e., locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary), felicity conditions, typology of speech acts, and indirect speech acts. This entry then discusses various fields of language sciences that have adopted and adapted the concepts and the framework of speech acts.