Illocutionary Acts And Sentence Meaning File

'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

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.

Meaning is determined by a sentence's potential to play the role a speaker intended. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning

Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning by William P. Alston

Alston explains the performance of these acts through the concept of "taking responsibility" ( Meaning is determined by a sentence's potential to

In his seminal work , philosopher William P. Alston argues that the meaning of a sentence is fundamentally rooted in its illocutionary act potential . He defines an illocutionary act as the act of saying something with a specific "content," such as a request, an assertion, or a promise. The Core Theory: Sentence Meaning as Potential

Utterances that express a psychological state, such as apologizing or congratulating. Alston argues that the meaning of a sentence

A sentence like "It's locked" has a basic meaning because it is usable to perform the act of asserting that something is locked.