Speech Act Theory: From Austin to Searle

Napoleon M. Mabaquiao, Jr.

De La Salle University, Manila

Abstract
The speech act theory is one of the rigorous attempts to systematically explain the
workings of language. It is not only widely influential in the philosophy of language,
but in the areas of linguistics and communication as well. This essay traces the
development of this theory from J. L. Austin’s first formulation of the theory to John
Searle’s further systematization and grounding of it. The essay first situates the theory
in the general approaches to the philosophy of language. After which, it explicates the
main features of the theory as initially articulated by Austin and further improved by
Searle. Among the innovations introduced by Searle, the essay highlights the
following: the distinction between the utterance and propositional acts, the distinction
between the effects of illocutionary acts and those of perlocutionary acts, a consistent
set of criteria for classifying speech acts, and the grounding of speech acts in terms of
rules and facts.

Introduction
The speech act theory is a theory in the philosophy of language which rigorously attempts
to systematically explain the workings of language. Its wide influence has transcended the confines
of the discipline of philosophy as it is currently one of the standard theories that are being studied
seriously in the areas of linguistics and communication. In this essay, I trace the evolution of the
theory from J. L. Austin’s initial investigations and analyses to John Searle’s significant
contributions to its further systematization. J. L. Austin and John Searle, accordingly, were the two
main pioneers of the theory. Austin initiated the work and laid its foundations, while John Searle,
Austin’s most illustrious student, further systematized it and solidified its foundations.
I shall divide the essay into four parts. As a background to the motivations of the theory, I
shall, in the first part, situate the theory in the general approaches towards philosophizing about

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language. In the second part, I shall examine Austin’s division of utterances into the constative
and performative kinds, and demonstration of the fundamentality of the latter. I shall discuss in
this part Searle’s own analysis of the component acts of speech acts and of the effects of such acts.
In the third part, I shall look into the basic kinds of speech acts with a view to showing how Searle
improved Austin’s original mode of classifying speech acts by introducing a consistent set of
criteria for such classification. In the fourth part, I shall examine Searle’s ontological grounding
of speech acts in terms of rules and facts. Specifically, I shall look into the kind of rules and facts
which, for Searle, makes speech acts possible.

Philosophizing About Language: An Overview

Philosophizing about language has two purposes. The first is to investigate how linguistic
expressions of various kinds acquire their meanings. The second is to use the results of the said
investigation to resolve philosophical issues. The first purpose is what defines the area of
philosophy of language; the second, on the other hand, refers to a philosophical method associated
with analytic philosophy called linguistic philosophy. Philosophy of language is an area in the
discipline of philosophy, while linguistic philosophy is a philosophical method for resolving
philosophical issues. While these two philosophies are different in that one is an area while the
other is a method, in the history of analytic philosophy, most philosophers of language are also
linguistic philosophers. This is not surprising for these two philosophies are closely related. One,
the theories of meaning in the philosophy of language serve as the analytical tools of linguistic
philosophy. Another, the assumption of linguistic philosophy is that most, if not all, philosophical
issues are at bottom linguistic confusions, which arise out of the failure to understand how
language works.
There are two general approaches to the philosophy of language: the so-called ideal-
language and ordinary-language approaches or philosophies (see Mabaquiao 2013). The ideal-
language philosophy focuses on the descriptive or representative function of language. It
investigates the meanings of words in so far as they relate to objects or facts in the world. These
linguistic expressions are said to be truth-bearing, for they represent states of affairs either
correctly or incorrectly. Thus language is here being investigated in the context of advancing
knowledge about the world, such as how language is used in the sciences and allegedly in

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metaphysics. The linguistic expressions being analyzed center on the propositions (or statements)
and their constituents such as proper names, definite descriptions, and predicate expressions.
On the other hand, ordinary-language philosophy does not focus on one particular function
of language. It investigates language in its variety of functions as found in the everyday, ordinary
contexts of using language (or language-games, as Wittgenstein put it). The focus of the
investigation is not the relation between language and world (the central concern of ideal-language
philosophy) but between language and its users. Thus language is here being investigated mainly
in the context of satisfying the intentions of the language-users. The linguistic expressions being
analyzed include a wide variety in which propositions (and their constituents) constitute just one
kind.
Depending on which approach it adopts, linguistic philosophy analyzes philosophical
issues in a certain way. Generally, linguistic philosophers of the ideal-language persuasion would
point out that philosophical issues arise when the descriptive function of language is confused with
its other functions, or, better, when the other functions of language, due to grammar, are mistaken
to be descriptive. In the language of Russell and Frege, this is the confusion between ordinary
grammar and logical grammar, which is brought about by the ambiguity and vagueness of ordinary
language (It is said that this is mainly due to the fact that various words can be used to refer to one
object, and that a single word can be used to refer to many objects.) Consequently, the way to
detect and avoid linguistic confusions is through the use of a logically perfect language (which, in
the hands of these philosophers trained in mathematics, refers to the language of symbolic logic).
On the other hand, linguistic philosophers of the ordinary-language persuasion would generally
point out that philosophical issues are results of using language outside of their ordinary contexts.
This point is exemplified when philosophers are looking for the essences of things, which they
believe can be known through the process of abstraction (the method by which an object or concept
is stripped of its contingent or non-necessary features). As Wittgenstein famously put it, such
philosophical issues arise “when language goes on holiday” (Philosophical Investigations 1953,
sec. 38)
Representative theories of meaning under the ideal-language philosophy include Locke’s
ideational theory, Mill’s object theory, Frege’s sense-reference theory, Russell’s theory of definite
descriptions, Wittgenstein’s picture theory, and the verificationist theory of the logical positivists.
On the other hand, representative theories of meanings under the ordinary-language philosophy

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include Moore’s views of common-sense, Wittgenstein’s use theory, Austin and Searle’s speech
act theory, and Grice’s theory of implicatures. Needless to say, there are other equally important
and influential theories of meaning falling under these two approaches (such as the theories of
meaning advanced by Chomsky, Kripke, Carnap, and Quine, among others). The speech act theory
is classified under the ordinary-language philosophy, for one, it aims to accommodate a wide
variety of linguistic functions, if not to cover all these functions. Another, as Austin would claim
and demonstrate, propositions or truth-bearing expressions do not occupy a fundamental status in
the overall operations of language, for their truth conditions are subsumed under the more general
conditions of success (or conditions of satisfaction, in the language of Searle) of speech acts. Still
another, the mental states of the language-users, which include their intentions, is a crucial
consideration in the successful performance of speech acts. This point emphasizes the ordinary-
language approach in which the language-world relation is determined by the language-language-
user relation (this is clearly demonstrated in Searle’s notion of direction of fit).

Austin on Two General Kinds of Utterances

This theory started with Austin’s preliminary distinction between two kinds of utterances,
what he called “constative utterances” (“constatives,” for short) and “performative utterances”
(“performatives,” for short), and his inquiry on whether this distinction could be consistently
maintained. Constatives refer to linguistic expressions that are either true or false, and are often
used to describe facts or states of affairs in the world. They correspond to what are normally
referred to as “statements” or “propositions.” Austin’s deviation from the standard name for this
kind of linguistic expressions was a way of avoiding the philosophical controversies surrounding
the nature of this kind of linguistic expressions. These controversies include the distinction
between genuine and pseudo propositions (attributed to the logical positivists), and between
referring expressions in form only and referring expressions in both form and content (made by
Russell in his theory of definite descriptions).
On the other hand, performatives refer to linguistic expressions that are used to perform
certain actions. They are the kind of expressions wherein we perform certain actions while saying
them. In this regard, to utter a performative means to perform an action. For instance, in saying “I
advise you to seek permission from your parents,” I am, in effect, performing the act of advising.
Or in saying “I order you to read your book,” I am, in effect, performing the act of ordering or

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making an order. The point shall be further clarified if we compare the foregoing examples of
performatives with the following statement: “I am washing the dishes.” By simply uttering this
statement, I have not performed the act of washing the dishes. I may have done the act of reporting
an event, but I have not performed the act indicated in the statement, that I am washing the dishes,
simply by uttering the said statement.
The conditions of success (or “conditions of satisfaction,” as Searle preferred to put it) for
constatives are indicated by the values of truth and falsity. If a constative successfully represents
what it intends to represent (that is, the state of affairs that it asserts to be in the world is really in
the world), we say that the constative is true; if otherwise, we say that it is false. If, for example,
we say that “It is raining” and it is actually raining, then our statement or constative is true. If, on
the other hand, it is not raining, then our statement is false. But what about performatives, what
are the values indicating their conditions of success? Austin, upon examining the English language
during his time, found no expressions serving this purpose. For this reason, he proposed the
expressions “happy” and “unhappy” to indicate, respectively, success and failure of performatives.
Accordingly, if a performative is successful, that is, the action it intends to perform is successfully
done, the performative is happy; if otherwise, it is unhappy. For instance, suppose I say “I promise
to attend the graduation ceremony” and I am not really sincere in saying it, that is, I do not really
put myself under the obligation to attend the ceremony. In this case, I have not really performed
the act of making a promise, as indicated in my utterance. As such, my performative, being a
failure, is unhappy. If, on the other hand, I say to someone “Please keep quiet” for I sincerely want
the person to keep quiet and this person does stop talking loudly, then I am successful in
performing the act I intend to perform (to request the person to keep quiet). In this case, my
performative, being a success, is happy.
In the philosophy of language, so much has been done to analyze the conditions for the
truth and falsity of constatives or statements. The three standard theories of truth (coherence,
correspondence, and pragmatic theories of truth) are part of such efforts. The case of the
performatives seems to have been neglected. And thus, Austin did his analyses of performatives
to fill in the gap. One important finding or discovery of Austin were the conditions under which
performatives could be said to be happy or unhappy, successful or unsuccessful. Austin identified
three of such conditions, which he explained in the mode of making a performative unhappy.

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 The first condition is the appropriateness of the persons involved in the performative (that
is, the speaker and the hearer in the conversation) and the circumstance in which the performative
is uttered. If such persons and circumstance are inappropriate, the performative is unhappy. In
particular, the performative, in this case, is null and void. For instance, if the person administering
a Christian wedding ceremony is not a person authorized to administer this ceremony, say he is
not a priest, a pastor, or a court judge, then his performative “I now pronounce you husband and
wife,” addressed to a couple in the ceremony, will be null and void. But let us say that this person
is authorized to administer the wedding ceremony but the persons he is marrying are not eligible
to be married (say they are under-aged or one or each of them is already married to another person),
then the same performative will also be null and void. Still, suppose that the person who utters the
same performative (“I now pronounce you husband and wife”) and the persons to whom it is
uttered are all appropriate for the ceremony, but then the circumstance in which the utterance of
the performative is made is inappropriate, in that it is not really a wedding ceremony but just, say,
a casual gathering, then the performative is also null and void.
The second is the insincerity of the person uttering a performative. In this case, the failure
of the performative takes the form of abuse of the performative. For instance, in saying “I promise
to attend your birthday party” to someone when I do not really intend to do so, my use of the
performative of making promises is an abuse of that performative. Needless to say, my
performative here is unhappy.
And the third is the failure to perform future actions entailed by performatives. In this case,
the failure of a performative takes the form of a breach of commitment. This happens when the
speaker, after issuing the performative, acts contrary to what is entailed by the performative. When,
for instance, the host of a party tells a guest “You are welcome,” the host commits himself/herself
to treating the guest kindly throughout the party. And so, if this host later on in the party treats the
guest unkindly, the host’s performative is a failure. And it is because there is a breach of
commitment—he/she fails to perform the action he/she commits himself/herself to doing when
he/she utters the performative.
After identifying and explicating the conditions of success or failure of performatives,
Austin realized that the conditions of success of constatives could actually be explained in terms
of the conditions of success of performatives. Austin realized that the conditions for the
unhappiness of performatives could explain the various ways constatives could be said to be false,

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or when these utterance, as Austin put it, “fail to get by.” In short, Austin wanted to show that the
falsity of constatives is just a feature of the unhappiness of performatives. To do this, Austin
considered the following statements:
1. All John’s children are bald.
2. The cat is on the mat.
3. All the guests are French.

First, the statement “All John’s children are bald” presupposes that John has children. This
means that it is only appropriate to say that John’s children are bald if John has children. Thus, if
John happens not to have any children, the utterance of the statement “All John’s children are
bald” fails to get by. According to Austin, this is the same as the case when performatives are
issued under inappropriate conditions, which make them null and void.
Second, the statement “The cat is on the mat” implies that the person who utters it believes
in what is being asserted in the statement—that the cat is on the mat. Thus, if someone utters it but
does not believe what the statement asserts, then it is like uttering the performative “I promise....”
without the intention of keeping it. In this sense, the statement “The cat is on the mat,” just like
the performative “I promise...,” is abused.
Third, in believing a statement one is committed to believing in what this statement entails.
Now the statement “All the guests are French” entails that it is not true that some guests are not
French. Thus, when someone utters, “All guests are French,” but later on says, “Some guests are
not French,” then this person has committed a breach of commitment. And this is no different from
the case when the host tells the guest “You are welcome” but later on treats this guest rudely.
Austin eventually arrived at the conclusion that a clear distinction could not be made
between constatives and performatives as constatives proved to be just a kind of performatives.
For the describing, stating, or asserting, which what constatives do are themselves acts performed
in saying something. Given this, Austin then embarked on the task of analyzing the logical
structure of performatives. Two of the significant realizations of Austin in doing so were the
following. First, performatives can be explicit or implicit. An explicit performative is one where it
is clear from the utterance of the performatives, like in the case of the performatives “I promise…,”
and “I advise you…” what actions are being performed. On the other hand, an implicit
performative is one where it is not clear from the utterance what kind of action is being performed.

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In this case, it is the context that determines what kind of action is being performed. For instance,
my utterance of “I will be there” may mean that I am making a promise, expressing an intention
of being there, or simply making a prediction of some future event. It is the context of my utterance
that indicates what action I am performing.
Second, the actions performed in uttering performatives can be broken down into three
kinds. The general act of uttering a performative, in other words, consist of three component acts.
The first is called the locutionary act, which refers to the mere utterance of the performatives. The
locutionary act is further broken down into three acts: the phatic act, referring to the act of
producing mere noises or sounds; the phonetic act, referring to the act of producing sounds that
are recognizable as words from a certain vocabulary and grammar; and the rhetic act, referring to
the act of using words to convey meanings (using words with sense and reference). The second
component act of the performative act is called the illocutionary act, which refers to the act that is
being done in uttering a performative. For instance, in uttering a performative, a speaker may
perform the illocutionary acts of making a promise, requesting, etc. And the third is called the
perlocutionary act, which refers to the act of the speaker in eliciting a certain response from the
hearer, or in making an effect on the hearer. For instance, the speaker, through his/her
performative, may want the hearer to be convinced, persuaded, delighted, etc.
Consequently, these three component acts of the performative act are related in the
following ways. A perlocutionary act presupposes an illocutionary act (a performative act cannot
be performed without performing an illocutionary act), which in turn, presupposes a locutionary
act (the illocutionary act cannot be performed without performing a locutionary act). However, a
locutionary act need not entail an illocutionary act, for one can just utter words without intending
to perform actions through these words. In turn, an illocutionary act need not entail a
perlocutionary, for one can perform an action through a performative without intending this
performative to have an effect on the hearer.
Let us not turn to Searle’s contributions to the theory at this point. Searle, to begin with,
preferred to use the term “speech act” to Austin’s “performative” and focused his investigations
on the illocutionary acts. For like Austin, Searle believed that these acts are the primary speech
acts. In this connection, Searle, in many of his works, often used the term “speech acts” to refer to
illocutionary acts. In explaining the component acts of speech acts (henceforth, following Searle’s
usage, understood as illocutionary acts), Searle, to avoid a possible confusion about illocutionary

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acts, first made a distinction between illocutionary acts and propositional contents. Following
Searle’s analysis (1971), consider the following sentences:
1. John leaves the room.
2. I hope John left the room.
3. John, please leave the room.
4. Has John left the room?
These sentences are used to perform different illocutionary acts. The first is used to make an
assertion; the second, to express hope; the third, to make a request; and the fourth, to ask a question.
But all of them are the same in having what Searle called the propositional content, which refers
to the fact that all of them have “John” as the subject which identifies a certain individual, and
“leaves the room” as the predicate which attributes a certain property to the individual named
“John.” The propositional content basically tells us the “what” of an illocutionary act. Now if these
sentences have the same propositional content, the question is, what element is added to them such
that their utterance result in different illocutionary acts? Searle called this added element the
“illocutionary force.” Searle explained what an illocutionary force is in terms of its indicating
device, in contrast to the indicating device of the propositional content. Searle (1977: 43-44)
explained:
From a semantical point of view, we can distinguish between the propositional indicator in
the sentence and the indicator of illocutionary force. That is, for a large class of sentences
used to perform illocutionary acts, we can say for the purpose of our analysis that the
sentence has two (not necessarily separate) parts, the proposition-indicating element and
function-indicating device. The function-indicating device shows how the proposition is to
be taken, or, to put it in another way, what illocutionary force that utterance is to have, that
is, what illocutionary act the speaker is performing in the utterance of the sentence.

Thus, for instance, in the sentence “I promise to attend your birthday party tomorrow,” the
phrase “I promise” is the illocutionary force indicator while the phrase “to attend your birthday
tomorrow” is the propositional indicator. The illocutionary force indicators, which come in a
variety of forms, are based on the word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of
the verb, and the so-called performative verbs. And in some cases, the illocutionary indicators are
merely implied, which can be known only through their contexts. The question in order is, if the
illocutionary-force-indicating device tells us the illocutionary force that a sentence has, what then
is the illocutionary force? Searle also explained that on the level of intentional (mental) states, the

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illocutionary force corresponds to the psychological mode or the attitude towards a
representational (or intentional) content—the representational content in turn is what the
propositional content corresponds to. On the basis of this correlation, we can think of the
illocutionary force as the “attitude” towards a propositional content, which produces the
illocutionary act as being of a certain kind. It must be noted, however, that the illocutionary force
does not refer to the intention of the speaker in performing a speech act (Searle’s term for such an
intention was “illocutionary point”), but this intention is part of the illocutionary force (the
illocutionary point thus partly makes up the illocutionary force), or is part of the attitude of the
speaker towards the propositional content of the speech act. Thus, in the sentences previously
mentioned, all of them have the same propositional content; but, in uttering these sentences, the
difference in the attitude (the illocutionary force) of the speaker towards this same propositional
content results in the performance of different illocutionary acts.
As has already been mentioned, the propositional content refers to the subject and the
predicate of a sentence used to perform an illocutionary act. But in the context of performing an
illocutionary act, the subject and the predicate are not simply expressed. Rather, the subject of the
sentence is used to perform the act of referring to an individual; and the predicate of the sentence
is used to perform the act of attributing a property to the individual. Thus, the propositional
content, seen in the context of performing an illocutionary act, is actually an act in itself, which
Searle called the propositional act. This propositional act further divides into the referring act (the
act of identifying the reference of the subject of a sentence) and the predicating act (the act of
attributing a property to the reference of the subject of a sentence).
Aside from the illocutionary and propositional acts, Searle, following Austin, also included
in his list of the basic speech acts the locutionary and perlocutionary acts. Searle’s classification,
however, has some modifications. Instead of Austin’s “locutionary act,” Searle used the term
“utterance act” to refer to the act of uttering words. And Searle added the propositional act as a
separate category from the utterance act. Thus, if Austin had locutionary acts (consisting of phatic,
phonetic, and rhetic acts), illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts, Searle had utterance acts
(consisting of phatic and phonetic acts), propositional acts (consisting of referring and predicating
acts), illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. One important difference between Austin’s and
Searle’s account concerns Austin’s rhetic act and Searle’s propositional act. As previously noted,
Austin’s rhetic act refers to the act of using words to convey meanings or using words with sense

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and reference. Austin’s use of the concepts of sense and reference obviously traces its origin from
Frege. Searle had no quarrel with this, for he himself subscribed to the Fregean sense-reference
distinction. However, Searle, aside from this distinction, also adhered to the Fregean contextual
principle, which states that words can only have sense and reference in the context of a proposition.
For Searle (1977, 25), this Fregean point emphasizes the fact that the primary bearers of sense and
reference are propositions, not words.

Classifying Speech Acts

In the latter part of his seminal work How to Do Things with Words (1989), Austin came
up with the following five basic types of performatives:
(1) Commissives. Their whole point “is to commit the speaker to a certain action” (Austin
1989: 157). E.g.: promise, undertake, covenant, bind myself, contract, propose to, and give
my word.
(2) Expositives. They “are used in acts of exposition involving the expounding of views, the
conducting of arguments and the clarifying of usages and of references” (Austin 1989:
161). E.g.: “I turn next to,” “I quote,” “I cite,” “I recapitulate,” “I repeat that,” and “I
mention that.”
(3) Exercitives. They have to do with “the giving of a decision in favour of or against a certain
course of action, or advocacy of it” (Austin 1989: 155). E.g.: appoint, dismiss, degrade,
excommunicate, demote, and name.
(4) Behavabitives. They “include the notion of reaction to other people’s behavior and fortunes
and of attitudes and expressions of attitudes to someone else’s past conduct or imminent
conduct” (Austin 1989: 160). E.g.: apologize, thank, deplore, criticize, commiserate,
compliment, condole, congratulate, and sympathize.
(5) Verdictives. They “consist in the delivering of a finding, official or unofficial, upon
evidence or reasons as to value or fact, so far as these are distinguishable. A verdictive is a
judicial act as distinct from legislative or executive acts…” (Austin 1989: 153). E.g.:
acquit, convict, read it as, reckon, place, grade, assess, characterize, rule, and estimate.

Austin (1989: 163) summarized his classification as follows: “To sum up, we may say that
the verdictive is an exercise of judgment, the exercitive is an assertion of influence or exercising

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of power, the commissive is an assuming of an obligation or declaring of an intention, the
behabitive is the adopting of an attitude, and the expositive is the clarifying of reasons, arguments,
and communications.”
Searle practically did not follow Austin’s classification (the only thing he retained was
Austin’s commissives). He instead came up with his own five basic types of speech acts; namely:
assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. The following were Searle’s
reasons for his new classification. First, Austin himself thought of his classification as just
preliminary and exploratory, and even expressed some dissatisfaction with it—as Austin (1989:
151) remarked: “I distinguish five general classes: but I am far from equally happy about all of
them.” Second, Austin was not consistent about the relevant dimensions of performatives that
bring about the differences among the kinds of performatives he identified. In other words,
Austin’s list lacks an organized set of principles that consistently differentiate one basic type of
performative from the others (see Fotion 2000: 45). Nick Fotion (2000: 45), in explaining this
reaction of Searle to Austin’s classification, describes Austin’s classification as follows: “It’s a bit
like comparing types of cars by noting that some are eight cylinder machines, some have power
brakes and power steering while others are red.” And third, Austin relied heavily on the verbs used
in speech acts or performatives instead of analyzing the whole speech acts (see Fotion 2000: 44).
In the lead article of his book Expression and Meaning (1986), Searle identified the
following dimensions of speech acts that consistently account for their differences: (1)
illocutionary point, (2) direction of fit, (3) sincerity condition, (4) force or strength of the point,
(5) status or position of the hearer or speaker, (6) way the utterance relates to the interests of the
hearer or speaker, (7) relationship to the rest of the discourse, (8) propositional content, (9)
requirement that some acts must be speech acts while others need not be, (10) lack or need for
extra-linguistic institutions, (11) lack of or need for illocutionary verbs, and (12) style of
performance. But among these twelve dimensions, Searle considered the first three (illocutionary
point, direction of fit, and sincerity condition) as the primary ones. The illocutionary point of an
illocutionary act or a speech act refers to the basic point or purpose of the speaker in performing
an illocutionary act of a certain kind. For instance, in making a promise, a speaker may have many
reasons or intentions; but in so far as she is making a promise, and not, say, making an assertion
or expressing hope, her basic point or purpose is to commit herself to an obligation to do something
for the receiver of her promise. Direction of fit refers to the direction of the match between the

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word (speech act) and the world (states of affairs) in determining the success of illocutionary acts.
It has three varieties; namely: (1) word-to-world direction of fit (where a speech act is being
matched with a state of affairs), (2) world-to-world direction of fit (where a state of affairs is being
matched with a speech act), and (3) null direction of fit (where there is no match intended between
a speech act and a state of affairs).
For instance, a statement has a word-to-world direction of fit for what is being matched in
a statement is the propositional content of the statement with a state of affairs. If a statement is
false, it is because the propositional content of such statement does not match with a state of affairs.
Here, what is at fault is the statement and not the state of affairs. A command, on the other hand,
has a world-to-word direction of fit, for what is being matched in a command is a state of affairs
with the command. If the command is not successful, it is not the fault of the command, but of the
state of affairs. An act of congratulating someone, however, does not have a direction of fit, for it
is merely an expression of a mental state, which is elation for what the speaker is congratulating
the person for. A necessary correlate of the concept of direction of fit is the concept of conditions
of satisfaction, which generally refers to the conditions of success of the speech acts that have a
direction of fit. That is to say, a speech that has a direction of fit can be said to be either satisfied
or not, successful or not; and the conditions that make this possible are generally referred to by
Searle as conditions of satisfaction. In this sense, a statement is either true or false; a command is
either followed or not; a promise is either kept or broken; and an order is either carried out or not.
The sincerity condition, on the other hand, refers to the appropriate mental state that goes
with the performance of an illocutionary act. For instance, in making a statement, say by uttering
“Philippine politics is dirty,” I should believe in the truth of what the statement asserts or states.
Otherwise, I am not really making a statement; perhaps I am just making a joke, simply making
an utterance act—say in the context of practicing my pronunciation—or I am telling a lie. In this
case, I am not performing the act of making a promise but the act of deceiving someone.
Consequently, on the basis of the principles of illocutionary point, direction of fit, and
sincerity condition, Searle identified the following basic types of speech acts:
(1) Assertives. E.g.: statements, descriptions, classifications, and explanations.
Illocutionary Point: “[T]o commit the hearer to the truth of the proposition. It is to present
the proposition as representing a state of affairs” (Searle 1999: 148).
Direction of Fit: word-to-world

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 Conditions of satisfaction: are either true or false.
Sincerity Condition: Belief (“An assertive is always an expression of a belief.” Searle 1999:
149).

(2) Directives. E.g.: orders, commands, and requests.

Illocutionary Point: “[T]o try to get the hearer to behave in such a way as to make his
behavior match the propositional content of the directive” (Searle 1999: 148-149).
Direction of Fit: world-to-word
Conditions of Satisfaction: can be obeyed, disobeyed, complied with, granted, and so on.
Sincerity Condition: Desire (“Every directive is an expression of a desire that the hearer
should do the directed act.” Searle 1999: 149).

(3) Commissives. E.g.: promises, vows, pledges, contracts, and guarantees.

Illocutionary Point. For the speaker to commit “to undertake the course of action
represented in the propositional content’ (Searle 1999: 149).
Direction of Fit: world-to-word
Conditions of Satisfaction: can be carried out, kept, or broken.
Sincerity Condition: Intention (Every commissive is “an expression of an intention to do
something.” Searle 1999: 149).

(4) Expressives. Some examples are: apologies, thanks, congratulations, welcomes, and
condolences.
Illocutionary Point: “[T]o express the sincerity condition of the speech act” (Searle 1999:
149).
Direction of Fit: null (for expressives assume the truth of their propositional content).
Conditions of Satisfaction: none
Sincerity Condition: varies with the type of expressive (E.g., in making an apology, the
speaker should feel sorry about what he is apologizing for; in congratulating someone,
the speaker should feel glad about what he is congratulating the hearer for.).

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 (5) Declaratives. E.g.: “I pronounce you man and wife,” “War is hereby declared,” “You are
fired,” and “I resign.”
Illocutionary Point: “[T]o bring about change in the world by representing it as having
been changed” (Searle 1999: 150).
Direction of Fit: double: word-to-world and world-to-word (By changing the world, the
direction of fit is world-to-word; by representing it as having been changed, the
direction of fit is word-to-world.)
Conditions of Satisfaction: varies (Searle does not specifically discuss the conditions of
satisfaction of declaratives; but following Austin, we can say that declaratives
are either happy or unhappy.)
Sincerity Condition: varies (Some directives have both belief and desire as their sincerity
condition—see Fotion 2000: 51)

Grounding Speech Acts: Rules and Facts

Searle thought that a complete and general theory of speech act should be able to account
for two things: first, the differences among the basic types of illocutionary acts; second, how such
acts are possible. We have already seen how Searle dealt with the first concern—by identifying
the relevant dimensions of illocutionary acts (illocutionary point, direction of fit, and sincerity
condition) that consistently explain their differences. Let us now briefly examine how Searle deals
with the second concern, which he does by clarifying the kind of rules that govern the performance
of illocutionary acts and the kind of facts involved in this performance.
Searle (1971, 34) distinguished between two types of rules: the regulative rules and the
constitutive rules. Regulative rules regulate pre-existing or antecedently-existing forms of
behavior. These are forms of behavior that existed prior to the formulation of the rules that govern
them. These forms of behavior would then continue to exist even if such rules had not been
formulated. Examples are the rules governing table manners. The forms of behavior involved in
table manners can exist even if the rules regulating them had not been formulated. On the other
hand, constitutive rules regulate forms of behavior that are created by the rules themselves. These
forms of behavior then could have not possibly existed if such rules had not been formulated.
Examples are the rules of games like chess, football, and basketball. The forms of behavior that
are regulated by these rules are created by the rules themselves.

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 The forms of behavior regulated by these rules turn into facts the moment they are
performed. Searle, in this consideration, then distinguished between two kinds of facts: what he
called brute facts and institutional facts. Behaviors regulated by regulative rules are brute facts,
while those regulated by constitutive rules are institutional facts. However, aside from human
behaviors, these facts (brute and institutional) include more. Institutional facts, on the one hand,
include all facts that are possible only because of some institutions or systems of constitutive rules.
For instance, the fact that a piece of metal has monetary value is an institutional fact, for what
makes it possible for the piece of metal to have such monetary value is the existence of the
institution of money.
On the other hand, brute facts include all non-institutional facts, or those whose possibility
is not logically dependent on the existence of some institution or system of constitutive rules. For
instance, the fact that the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun is a brute fact, for what
makes it possible is not the existence of some institution or system of constitutive rules. In this
regard, the possibility of brute facts cannot be explained solely in terms of regulative rules (for
regulative rules only apply to human behaviors), unlike the possibility of institutional facts which
is explained solely in terms of constitutive rules. What ultimately explains the possibility of brute
facts, then, are the laws of the natural sciences. This is assumed in the previous example about
money, wherein Searle explains that money cannot be explained in terms of the physics of money
but only in terms of the constitutive rules governing its function or use. For what the physics of
money can only explain is the brute facts about money, like the fact that a piece of money is
circular, metallic, etc. Searle also gave the example of a football game. Searle noted that no
amount of physics could adequately explain the events in such a game; for precisely the rules
governing the game are constitutive (see Searle 1977: 52).
Let us now relate these distinctions about rules and facts to speech acts. First, what are the
kind of rules that regulate the performance of illocutionary acts? Second, what kind of facts are
illocutionary acts? According to Searle (1977: 36-37), the performance of illocutionary acts is
governed by constitutive rules; and consequently, illocutionary acts are institutional facts. Thus he
(1977: 52) wrote: “Our hypothesis that speaking a language is performing acts according to
constitutive rules involves us in the hypothesis that the fact that a man performed a certain speech
act, e.g., made a promise, is an institutional fact. We are not, therefore, attempting to give an
analysis of such facts in terms of brute facts.” The possibility of illocutionary acts is therefore

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created by the constitutive rules that govern them. In sum, speech acts (the illocutionary acts) are
possible because of constitutive rules and institutional facts. Speech acts are created by the
constitutive rules that govern them; and as facts, speech acts are institutional facts. For instance,
the act of making a promise is an institutional fact for it is created by the rules that govern it. One
such rule is that in making a promise one should put oneself under the obligation to fulfill such a
promise. Prior to this rule, there simply is no act of making promises.

Conclusion
In this essay, I have shown how the speech act theory developed from the ideas of its two
main pioneers, namely Austin and Searle. After explicating Austin’s initial thoughts about the
theory, we examined Searle’s innovations to further systematize the theory and strengthen its
foundations. Austin’s claim that constatives are ultimately just a kind of performatives or speech
acts makes speech acts the fundamental units of language. Consequently, Austin dislodged the
primacy of truth-bearing expressions, the propositions, over other linguistic functions, a view
shared by ideal-language philosophers. As demonstrated by Austin, the truth conditions of
propositions are actually just a species of the more general conditions of success (or the conditions
of satisfaction, as Searle would prefer to call it) of speech acts.
For his part, Searle’s introduced some innovations to the theory to fill in certain gaps and
avoid possible confusions in Austin’s formulation of the theory. Among these innovations, we
have focused on the following: (1) Searle’s distinction between the utterance and propositional
acts, which Austin lumped together in the locutionary act; (2) Searle’s distinction between the
effects of illocutionary acts and the effects of perlocutionary acts, as Austin only spoke of the
effects of speech acts through the perlocutionary act; (3), Searle’s laying down of a uniform or
consistent set of criteria for classifying speech acts (consisting of the illocutionary point, direction
of fit, conditions of satisfaction, and sincerity condition) which Austin’s own classification lacks;
and (4) Searle’s clarification of the kind of rules (the constitutive rules) and the kind of facts (the
institutional facts) which provided the needed grounding for the possibility of speech acts, which
Austin apparently did not deal with.

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_______. 1971. Performative-Constative. In The philosophy of language. Edited by John

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Searle, John.1968. Russell’s objections to Frege’s theory of sense and reference. In Essays on
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_______. 1971. What is a speech act? In The philosophy of language. Edited by John
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_______. 1977. Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. New York: Cambridge
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_______. 1986. Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts.
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_______. 1995. The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press.

_______. 1999. Mind, language and society: Doing philosophy in the real world. London:
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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.

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(Published in the Augustinian Journal, Dec. 2018, University of San Agustin, Iloilo, Philippines)

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