Chapter 2

J.L. Austin

HOW TO DO THINGS WITH

WORDS

It/HAT I sHAtL HAVE to say here is neither difficult nor contentious;

Y Y the only merit I should like to claim for it is that of being true, at least in
Plrts- The phenomenon to be discussed is very widespreaa ana obvious, and
m c'rnnot fail to have been already noticed, at least here and there, by others. yet
I have not found attention paid to it specifically.
It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a 'state-
m€nt' can only be to 'describe' some state of affairs, or to 'state some fact', which
rt must do either truly_or falsely. Grammarians, indeed, have regularly pointed out
rthat not all 'sentences' are (used inrnaking) statements:l
ther.""r.,'traditionally,
hesides (grammarians') statements, also q,rJrtio.r, and exclamations, and
sentences
tryressing commands or wishes or concessions. And doubtless philosophers have
not intended to deny this, despite some loose use of 'sentencei for'statement'.
Doubtless, too, both grammarians and philosophers have been aware that it is
by
no means easy to distinguish even questions, commands, and so on from statements
bv means of the few and jejune grammatical marks available, such as word order,
mood, and the like: t}ough perhaps it has not been usual to dwell on the difficul-
ties which this fact obviously raises. For how do we decide which is which? What
re the limits and definitions of each?
But now in recent years, many things which would once have been accepted
ridout question as 'statements' by both philosophers and grammarians ha',,e bee.,
rcnrtinized with new care. . . . It has come to be commonly tt"ta that many utter-
imc€s which look like statements are either not intended at all, or only intended
in Part, to record or impart straightforward information about the facts: for
example, 'ethical propositions' are perhaps intended, solely or partly, to evince
or to prescribe conduct or to influence it in special ways. . . . We very
ryotio_n
often also use utterances in ways beyond the scope at least of tradition"l gr"-rrr"i

Snrrc]e: J.L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
56 J.L. AUSTIN

It has come to be seen that many specially perplexing words embedded in appar-
ently descriptive statements do not serve to indicate some specially odd additional
feature in the reality reported, but to indicate (not to report) the circumstances in
which the statement is made or reservations to which it is subject or the way in
which it is to be taken and the like. To overlook these possibilities in the way once
common is called the 'descriptive' fallacy; but perhaps t}is is not a good name, as S

'descriptive' itself is special. Not all true or false statements are descriptions, and it
for this reason I prefer to use the word 'Constative' . . .
Utterances can be found . . . such that:

A they do not 'describe' or 'report' or constate anything at all, are not 'true
u
or false'; and
is
the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which
d
again would notnormawb. described as, or as'just', saying something . . .
o
b
sl

d
3r

v
Examples:
tt
n
(") 'l do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)' - as uttered in the
n
course of the marriage ceremony.
ti
(b) 'l name this ship the @teen Elizabeth' - as uttered when smashing the bottle
g
against the stern.
(.) 'l give and bequeath my watch to my brother' - as occuoi.g in a will.
n
(d) 'I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.'
P
o
In these examples it to utter the sentence (in, of course, the
seems clear that
g
appropriate circumstances) is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in
a
so uttering to be doing or to state t}at I am doing it: it is to do it. None of the
utterances cited is either true or false: I assert this as obvious and do not argue it.
c
It needs argument no more t}an that 'damn' is not true or false: it may be that v
the utterance 'serves to inform you' - but that is quite different. To name the ship a
is to say (in the appropriate circumstances) the words 'I name, etc.'. When I sa1l, d
before the registrar or altar, 'l do', I am not reporting on a marriage: I am indulging ir
in it. v
What are we to call a sentence or an utterance of this Tp.? I propose to call s
it a pelformative sentence or a performative utterance, or, for short, 'a performative'. v
The term 'performative' will be used in a variety of cognate ways and construc- Sl

tions, much as the term 'imperative' is. The name is derived, of course, from d
'perform', the usual verb with the noun 'action': it indicates that the issuing of the t
utterance is the performing of an action - it is not normally thought of as just J,
saying something. b
t
d

d
 HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS 57

Are we then to say things like this:

'To marry is to say a few words', or

'Betting is simply saying something'?

Such a doctrine sounds odd or even flippant at first, but with sufficient safeguards
it may become not odd at all.

The uttering of the words is, indeed, usually a, or even the,leading incident
in the performance of the act (of betting or what not), the perfonnance of which
is also the object of the utterance, but it is far from being usually, even if it is ever,
the so/e thirg necessary if the act is to be deemed to have been performed. Speaking
generally, it is always necessary that the circumstances in which the words are uttered
should be in some way, or ways, appropriate, and it is very commonly necessary
dat either the speaker himself or other persons should also perform certain otler
actions, whet}er 'physical' or 'mental' actions or even acts of uttering further
u-ords. Thus, for naming th" ship, it is essential that I should be the person appointed
to name her; for (Christian) marrying, it is essential that I should not be already
married with a wife living, sane and undivorced, and so on; for a bet to have been
made, it is generally necessary for the offer of the bet to have been accepted by a
taker (who must have done something, such as to say 'Done'); *d it is hardly a
$ft if I say 'l give it you' but never hand it over. . . .
But we mal, in objecting, have something totally different, and this time quite
mistaken, in mind, especially when we think of some of the more awe-inspiring
performatives such as 'I promise to . . .' . Surely the words must be spoken 'seri-
ously' and so as to be taken 'seriously'? This is, t}ough vague, true enough in
general - it is an important commonplace in discussing the purport of any utter-
ance whatsoever. I must not be joking, for example, nor writing a poem. . . .
Well we shall next consider what we actually do say about the utterance
concerned when one or another of its normal concomitants is absent.In no case do
\n-e say that the utterance was false but rather that the utterance
- or rather the
act, e.g., th" promise - was void, or given in bad faith, or not implemented, or
the like. In the particular case of promising, as with many other performatives, it
is appropriate that the person uttering the promise should have a certain intention,
riz. here to keep his word: and perhaps of all concomitants this looks the most
suitable to be that *hich 'I promise' does describe or record. Do we not actually,
when such intention is absent, speak of a 'false' promise? Yet so to speak is not to
say that the utterance 'I promise that . .' is false, in the sense that though he states
that he does he doesn't, or t}at though he describes he misdescribes - misreports.
For he does promise: the promise here is not even roid, though it is given in bad
Jaith. His utterance is perhaps misleading, probably deceitful and doubtless wrong,
but it is not a lie or a misstatement. At most we might make out a case for saying
that it implies or insinuates a falsehood or a misstatement (to the effect that he
does intend to do something): but that is a very different matter. Moreover, we
do not speak of a false bet or a false christening; and t}at we do speak of a false
58 J.L. AUSTIN

Promise need commit us no more than the fact that we speak of a false move.
'False' is not necessarily used of statements only.

Besides the uttering of the words of so-called performative, a good many other
things have as a general rule to be right and to go right if we are to be said to have
happily brought off our action. What these are we may hope to discover by looking
at and classifying types of case in which something Boes wronB and the act marrying,
-
betting, bequeathing, christening, or what not - is therefore at least to some extent
a failure: the utterance is then, we may say, not indeed false but in general unhappy.
And for this reason we call the doctrine of the things that can be and go wronB on
the occasion of such utterances, the doctrine of the Infelicities.
Suppose we try first to state schematically
- and I do not wish to claim any
sort of finality for this scheme - some at least of the things which are necessary
for the smooth or 'happy' functioning of a performative (or at least of a highly
developed explicit performative, such as we have hitherto been alone concerned
with), and then give examples of infelicities and their effects. . . .

A.1 There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conven-
tional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain
persons in certain circumstances, and further,
A.2 the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate
for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.
B.1 The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and
8.2 completely.
C.1 Where, as often, the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain
thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct
on the part of any participant, then a person participating in and so invoking
the procedure must in fact have those thoughts or feelings, and the partici-
pants must intend so to conduct themselves, and further
C.2 must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.

Now if we sin against *y one (or more) of these six rules, our performative utter-
ance will be (in one way or another) unhappy. But, of course, there are considerable
differences between these 'ways' of being unhappy - ways which are intended to
be brought out by the letter-numerals selected for each heading.
The first big distinction is between all the four rules A and B taken together,
as oPposed to the two rules C . . . . If we oflend against any of the former rules
(As or Bt) - that is, if we, say, utter the formula incorrectly, or if, say, we are not
in a position to do the act because we are, say, married already, or it is the purser
and not the captain who is conducting th" ceremony, then the act in questior, €.g.r
marrying, is not successfully performed at all, does not come off, is not achieved.
Whereas in the two C cases the act is achieved, although to achieve it in such circum-
stances, as when we are, say, insincere, is an abuse of the procedure. Thus, when
I say 'I promise' and have no intention of keeping it, I have promised but. . . . We
need names for referring to this general distinction, so we shall call in general those
 HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS 59

infelicities A.1-B.2 which are such t}at the act for the performing of which, and in
the performing of which, the verbal formula in question is designed, is not achieved,
bv the name MISFIRES: and on the other hand we may christen those infelicities where
fu act is achieved ABusES. . . . When the utteranceis a misfire, the procedure which
we purport to invoke is disallowed or is botched: and our act (marrying, etc.) is
roid or without effect, etc. We speak of our act as a purported act, or perhaps
rn attempt - or we use such an expression as 'went through a form of marriag.' by
cDntrast with 'married'. On the other hand, in the C cases, we speak of our
infelicitous act as 'professed' or 'hollow' rather than 'purported' or 'empty', and as
not implemented, or not consummated, rather than as void or without effect. But
let me hasten to add that these distinctions are not hard and fast, and more especially
that such words as 'purported' and 'professed' will not bear very much stressing.
Trvo final words about being void or without effect. This does not mean, of course,
to say that we won't have done anything: lots of things will have been done - we
4rell most interestingly have committed the act of bigamy - but we shall not have
done the purported act, viz. rnarrying. Because despite the name, you do not when
bigamous marry twice. . . . Further, 'without effect' does not here mean 'without
@nsequences, results, effects'.

The performative utterances I have taken as examples are all of them highly
developed affairs, of the kind that we shall call explicit performatives, by contrast
with merely implicit performatives. That is to say, they (all) begin with or include
some highly significant and unambiguous expression such as'I bet', 'I promise',
'I bequeath' an expression very commonly also used in naming the act which, in
-
making such an utterance, I am performing - for example betting, promising,
\ueathing, etc. But, of course, it is both obvious and important that we can on
occasion use the utterance 'go' to achieve practically the same as we achieve by
the utterance'l order you to go': and we should say cheerfully in either case,
describing subsequently what someone did, that he ordered me to go. It may,
however, be uncertain in fact, and, so far as the mere utterance is concerned, is
always left uncertain when we use so inexplicit a formula as the mere imperative
'go', whether the utterer is ordering (or is purporting to order) me to go or merely
advising, entreating, or what not me to go. Similarly 'There is a bull in the field'
may or may not be a warning, for I might just be describing the scenerl, and
'I shall be there' may or may not be a promise. Here we have primitive as distinct
from explicit performatives; and there may be nothing in the circumstances by
which we can decide whether or not the utterance is performative at all. Anyway,
in a given situation it can be open to me to take it as either one or the other. It
was a performative formula - perhaps - but the procedure in question was not suffi-
ciently explicitly invoked. Perhaps I did not take it as an order or was not anyway
bound to take it as an order. The person did not take it as a promise: i.e., in the
particular circumstance he did not accept the procedure, on the ground that the
ritual was incompletely carried out by the original speaker.
60 J.L. AUSTIN

We shall next consider three of the many ways in which a statement implies
the truth of certain other statements. One of those that I shall mention has been
long known. The others have been discovered quite recently. We shall not put the
matter too technically, though this can be done. I refer to the discovery that the
ways we can do wrong, speak outrageously, in uttering conjunctions of 'factual'
statements, are more numerous t}an merely by contradiction . . .

1 Entails: 'All men blush' entails 'some men blush'. We cannot say 'All men
blush but not any men blush', or 'the cat is under the mat and the cat is on
top of the mat' or 'the cat is on the mat and the cat is not on the mat', since
in each case the first clause entails the contradictory of the second.
2 Implies: My saying 'the cat is on the mat' implies that I believe it is . . . We
cannot say 'the cat is on the mat but I do not believe it is'. (This is actually
not the ordinary use of implies': 'implies'is really weaker: as when we say
'He implied that I did not know it' or 'You implied you knew it' (as distinct
from believing it.)
3 Presupposes: 'All Jack's children are bald' presupposes that Jack has some chil-
dren. We cannot say 'All Jack's children are bald but Jack has no children',
or 'Jack has no children and all his children are bald'.
There is a common feeling of outrage in all these cases. But we must not
use some blanket term, 'implies'or'contradiction', because there are very
great differences. There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in
butter; but this is the sort of thirg (as the proverb indicates) we overlook:
there are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely . . .

The act of 'saying something' in the full normal sense I call, i.e., dub, the
performance of a locutionary act, and the study of utterances thus far and in these
respects the study of locutions, or of the full units of speech. Our interest in the
locutionary act is, of course, principally to make quite plain what it is, in order to
distinguish it from other acts with which we are primarily concerned . . .
To perform a locutionary act is in general, we may say, also and eo ipso to
perfiorm an illocutionary act, as I propose to call it. Thus in performing a locutionary
act we shall also be performing such an act as:

asking or answering a question;

Sving some information or an assurance or a warning;
announcing a verdict or an intention;
pronouncing sentence;
making an appointment or an appeal or a criticism;
making an identification or giving a description;

and the numerous like. (I am not suggesting that this is a clearly defined class
by any means.) . . . When we perform a locutionary act, we use speech: but in
what way precisely are we using it on this occasion? For there are very numerous
functions of or ways in which we use speech and it makes a great difference to our
act in some sense - in which way and which sense we were on this occasion 'using'
it. It makes a geat difference whether we were advising, or merely suggesting, or
 HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS 51

rctually ordering, whether we were strictly promising or only announcing a vague

intention, and so forth. These issues penetrate a little but not without confusion
into grammar, but we constantly do debate them, in such terms as whether certain
words (a certain locution) had the force oJ a question , or ought to have been taken as
an estimate and so on.
I explained the performance of an act in this new and second sense as the
performance of an 'illocutionary' act, i.e. performance of an act in saying some-
ding as opposed to perforrnance of an act oJ saying something; I call the act
performed an 'illocution' and shall refer to the doctrine of the different types of
frmction of language here in question as the doctrine of illocutionary forces'.

There is yet a further sense in which to perform a locutionary act, and therein
en illocutionary act, may also be to perform an act of another kind. Saying some-
&ing will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon
the feelings, t}oughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other
persons: and it may be done with the design, intention or purpose of producing
them; and we may then say, thinking of this, that the speaker has performed an
lct in the nomenclature of which reference is made either (a), only obliquely, or
er-en (b), not at all, to the performance of the locutionary or illocutionary act. We
Sall call the performance of an act of this kind the performance of a 'perlocution-
ln'' act, and the act performed, where suitable - essentially in cases falling under
(e) a 'perlocution'
-
Acts of all our three kinds [locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary] neces-
sitate, since they are the performing of actions, allowance being made for the ills
that dl action is heir to. We must systematically be prepared to distinguish between
'the act of doing x', i.e., achieving x, and 'the act of attempting to do x'.
In the case of illocutions we must be ready to draw the necessary distinction,
not noticed by ordinary language except in exceptional cases, between:

ia) the act of attempting or purporting (or affecting or professing or claiming or

setting up or setting out) to perform a certain illocutionary act, and
{b) the act of successfully achieving or consummating or bringing off such an act.

This distinction is, or should be, a commonplace of the theory of our language
ebout 'action' in general. But attention has been drawn earlier to its special import-
ance in conrre*ioi with performatives: it is always possible, for example, to iry to
Sank or inform somebody yet in different ways to fail, because he doesn't listen,
or takes it as ironical, or wasn't responsible for whatever it was, and so on. This
distinction will arise, as over any act, over locutionary acts too; but failures here
will not be unhappiness as there, but rather failures to get the words out, to express
ourselves clearly, etc.
Since our acts are actions, we must always remember the distinction between
producing effects or consequences which are intended or unintended; and (i)
w*ren the speaker intends to produce an effect it may nevertheless not occur, and
(ii) when he does not intend to produce it or intends not to produce it it may
62 J.L. AUSTIN

nevertheless occur. To cope with complication (i) we invoke as before the distinc-
tion between attempt and achievement; to cope with complication (ii) we invoke
the normal linguistic devices of disclaiming (adverbs like 'unintentionally' and so
on) which we hold ready for general use in all cases of doing actions.

The perlocutionary act may be either the achievement of a perlocutionary object

(convince, persuade) or the production of a perlocutionary sequel. Thus the act of
warning may achieve its perlocutionary object of alerting and also have the perlocu-
tionary sequel of alarming, and an argument against a view may fail to achieve its
object but have the perlocutionary sequel of convincing our opponent of its truth
('I only succeeded in convincing him'). What is the perlocutionary object of one
illocution may be the sequel of another. For example, warning may produce the
sequel of deterring and saying 'Don't', whose object is to deter, may produce
the sequel of alerting or even alarming. Some perlocutionary acts are always
the producing of a sequel, namely those where there is no illocutionary formula:
thus I may surprise you or upset you or humiliate you by a locution, though there
is no illocutionary formula 'l surprise you by . . .' ,'l upset you by . . .' ,'I humiliate
youby...'
It is characteristic of perlocutionary acts that the response achieved, or the
sequel, can be achieved additionally or entirely by non-locutionary means: t}us
intimidation may be achieved by waving a stick or pointing a gun. Even in the cases
of convincing, persuading, getting to obey and getting to believe, we may achieve
t}e response non-verbally; but if there is no illocutionary act, it is doubtful whether
this language characteristic of perlocutionary objects should be used. Compare
the use of 'got him to' with that of 'got him to obey'. However, this alone is not
enough to distinguish illocutionary acts, since we can for example warn or order
or appoint or give or protest or apologzeby non-verbal means and these are illo-
cutionary acts. Thus we may cock a snook or hurl a tomato by way of protest.

When we originally contrasted the performative with the constative utterance

we said that

1 the performative should be doing something as opposed to just sayrng some-

thing; and
2 the performative is h"ppy or unhappy as opposed to true or false.

Were these distinctions really sound? Our subsequent discussion of doing and say-
ing certainly seems to point to the conclusion that whenever I 'say' anything (except
perhaps a mere exclamation like 'damn' or 'ouch') I shall be performing both locu-
tionary and illocutionary acts, and these two kinds of acts seem to be the very things
which we tried to use, under the names of 'doing' .td 'saying', as a means of dis-
tinguishing performatives from constatives. If we are in general always doing both
things, how can our distinction survive?
 HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS 63

Let us first reconsider the contrast from the side of constative utterances: of
these, we were content to refer to 'statements' as the typical or paradigm case.
Would it be correct to say that when we state something

we are doing something as well as and distinct from just saing something,
and
our utterance is liable to be h"ppy or unhappl (as well as, if you will, true
or false)?

Surely to state is every bit to perform an illocutionary act as, say, to

as much
want or to pronounce. Of course it is not to perform an act in some specially phyt-
ically wa!r other than in so far as it involves, when verbal, the making of movements
of vocal organs; but then nor, as we have seen, is to warn, to protest, to promise
or to name. 'stating' seems to meet all the criteria we had for distinguishing the
illocutionary act. Consider such an unexceptionable remark as the following:

In saying that it was raining, I was not betting or arguing or warning:

I was simply stating it as a fact.

Here 'stating' is put absolutely on a level with arguing, betting, md warning. . . .

Moreover, alt}ough the utterance 'He did not do it' is often issued as a state-
ment, and is then undoubtedly true or false (tit is if anything is), it does not seem
possible to say that it differs from 'I state that he did not do it' in this respect.
lf someone says 'I state that he did not do it', w€ investigate the truth of his
statement in just the same way as if he had said 'He did not do it' . . .
Moreover, if we think of the alleged contrast, according to which performa-
tives are h"ppy or unhappy and statements true or false, again from the side of
supposed constative utterances, notably statements, we find that statements arc
liable to every kind of infelicity to which performatives are liable. Let us look
back again and consider whether statements are not liable to precisely the same
disabilities as, say, warnings by way of what we called 'infelicities' - that is various
disabilities which make an utterance unhappy without, however, making it true
or false.
We have already noted that sense in which saying, as equivalent to stating,
'The cat is on the mat' implies that I believe that the cat is on the mat. This is
parallel to the sense - is t}e same sense - as that in which 'l promise to be there'
implies that I intend to be there and that I believe I shall be able to be there. So
the statement is liable to the insincerity form of infelicity; and even to the breach
form of infelicity in this sense, that saying or stating that the cat is on the mat
commits me to saying or stating 'The mat is underneath the cat' just as much as
the performative 'l define X as Y (in thelat sense, say) commits me to using those
terms in special ways in future discourse, and we can see how this is connected
rvith such acts as promising. This means that statements can give rise to infelicities
of our two C kinds.
Now what about infelicities of the A and B kinds, which rendered the
act - warning, undertaking, etc. - null and void? Can a thirg that looks like a
 64 J.L. AUSTIN

statement be null and void just as much as a putative contract? The answer seems
to be Yes, importantly. The first cases are A.1 and A.2, where there is no con-
vention (or not an accepted convention) or where the circumstances are not
appropriate for its invocation by the speaker. Many infelicities of just this type
do infect statements.
We have already noticed the case of a putative statem ent presupposing (as it is
called) the existence of that which it refers to; if no such ahirg exists, 'the state-
ment' is not about anything. Now some say that in these circumstances, if, for
example, someone asserts that the present King of France is bald, 'the question
whether he is bald does not arise'; but it is better to say that the putative state-
ment is null and void, exactly as when I say that I sell you somethirg but it is not
mine or (having been burnt) is not any longer in existence. Contracts often are
void because the objects they are about do not exist, which involves a breakdown
of reference.
But it is important to notice also that 'statements' too are liable to infelicity
of this kind in ot}er ways also parallel to contracts, promises, warnings, etc. Just
as we often say, for example, 'You cannot order me', in the sense 'You have not
t}e right to order me', which is equivalent to saytng that you are not in the appro-
priate position to do so: so often there are things you cannot state have no right
-
to state - are not in a position to state. You cannot now state how many people
there are in the next room; if you say 'There are fifty people in the next room',
I can only regard you as guessing or conjecturing (just as sometimes you are not
ordering me, which would be inconceivable, but possibly asking me to rather impo-
litely, so here you are 'hazarding a guess' rather oddly). Here there is something
you might, in other circumstances, be in a position to state; but what about state-
ments about other persons' feelings or about the future? Is a forecast or even a
prediction about, say, persons' behaviour really a statement? It is important to take
the speech-situation as a whole.

Once we realize that what we have to study is nor t}e sentence but the issuing
of an utterance in a speech situation, there can hardly be any longer a possibility
of not seeing that stating is perfo*irg an act
What t}en finally is left of the distinction of the performative and constative
utterance? Really we may say that what we had in mind here was this:

(") With the constative utterance, we abstract from the illocutionary (let alone
the perlocutionary) aspects of the speech act, and we concentrate on the locu-
tionary: moreover, we use an oversimplified notion of correspondence with
the facts - oversimplified because essentially it brings in the illocutionary
aspect. This is the ideal of what would be right to say in all circumstances,
for any purpose, to any audience, etc. Perhaps it is sometimes realized.
(b) With the performative utterance, we attend as much as possible to the illo-
cutionary force of the utterance, and abstract from the dimension of
correspondence with facts.
 HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS 65

Perhaps neither of these abstractions is so very expedient: perhaps we have

here not really two poles, but rather a historical development. Now in certain
cNes, perhaps with mathematical formulas in physics books as examples of consta-
tives, or with the issuing of simple executive orders or the gving of simple names,
say, as examples of performatives, we approximate in real life to finding such t}ings.
It was examples of this kind, like'I apologize', and'The cat is on t}e mat', said
for no conceivable reason, extreme marginal cases, that gave rise to the idea of
two distinct utterances. But the real conclusion must surely be that we need (1)
to distinguish between locutionary and illocutionary acts, and (2) specially and crit-
ically to establish with respect to each kind of illocutionary act - warnings,
estimates, verdicts, statements, and descriptions - what if any is the specific way
in which they are intended, first to be in order or not in order, and second, to be
'right' or 'wrong'; what terms of appraisal and disappraisal are used for each and
what they mean. This is a wide field and certainly will not lead to a simple distinc-
tion of 'true' and 'false'; nor will it lead to a distinction of statements from the
rest, for stating is only one among very numerous speech acts of the illocutionary
class.
Furthermore, in general the locutionary act as much as the illocutionary is an
abstraction only: every genuine speech act is both.

Note

It is, of course, not really correct t}at a sentence ever is a statement: rather, it is
used in making a statement, and the statement itself is a 'logical construction' out of the
makings of statements.