---
slug: thinker-austin-searle
title: J.L. Austin and John Searle — Speech Acts
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---

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# J.L. Austin and John Searle — Speech Acts

## §SELF — thinker-austin-searle

**What this page is:** An explanation of speech act theory and its two principal architects.
**What it explains:** How saying something is a form of doing something, and why this distinction matters for designing systems that process language.
**Why read it:** To understand the difference between describing an action and performing one — a distinction with direct consequences for protocol design.

### What Speech Act Theory Is

Speech act theory is the branch of philosophy of language that studies how utterances perform actions, not just describe the world.

J.L. Austin (1911–1960), a British philosopher, introduced the theory in a series of lectures at Harvard in 1955, published as *How to Do Things with Words* (1962). His core claim: language is not only for stating facts. Some sentences do not describe anything — they perform an action by being spoken. Example: "I promise to pay you" does not describe a promise; it makes one.

### Why It Matters

If saying something is doing something, then any system that processes language must distinguish between descriptions (statements about the world) and performances (actions carried out through words). A protocol that treats a capability description as a command has a design flaw: it confuses what a user *can* do with what they *are* doing.

### The Key Idea

A speech act has three components:

1. **Locution** — the act of saying something. This is the words themselves, with their literal meaning. Example: the string of sounds or text "I promise to pay you."

2. **Illocution** — what the speaker is doing in saying it. This is the force of the utterance: promising, ordering, warning, asking, naming. Example: the act of making a promise.

3. **Perlocution** — the effect the utterance has on the listener. This is the consequence: persuading, frightening, convincing, reassuring. Example: the listener now believes they will be paid.

Example in full: "I promise to pay you $50."
- Locution: the words "I promise to pay you $50"
- Illocution: the act of promising
- Perlocution: your confidence that you will receive $50

John Searle (born 1932) systematized Austin's work in *Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language* (1969). Searle added formal rules for what makes a speech act valid (felicity conditions) and classified illocutionary acts into five types: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.

### What They Got Right

- Identified that meaning is not only in the words but in what the speaker intends to do with them.
- Created a framework that applies to any language use, including machine-processed language.
- Showed that context determines meaning: the same sentence can be a warning, a threat, or a promise depending on who says it and when.
- Searle's classification system allows systematic analysis of any utterance's function.

### What They Got Wrong or Left Unfinished

- Austin died before fully developing the theory; his published work is reconstructed from lecture notes.
- Searle's classification is disputed: some philosophers argue the five categories overlap and cannot be cleanly separated.
- Neither addressed how speech acts function in non-human or machine-mediated communication. The theory was built for face-to-face conversation.
- The perlocutionary effect is inherently unpredictable: you cannot know what effect your words will have, which makes it hard to model formally.

### How It Connects to Other Ideas

**Protocol design.** An OIP (Object Invocation Protocol) invocation is a speech act. The locution is the HTTP request (the bytes sent over the network). The illocution is the object invocation — what the request is doing (e.g., "I invoke the NOW object"). The perlocution is the receipt — the proof that the action was performed.

**Capability description vs. invocation.** Austin's key insight applies directly to the token drop problem. A capability description ("you can access object X") is a description — an assertive speech act. It states what is possible. An invocation request ("I invoke object X now") is a directive — it performs an action. The model must not confuse the two. A token that says what you *can* do is not the same as a request that says what you *are* doing.

**Receipt as proof of illocution.** In speech act terms, a receipt is proof that the illocution happened. It documents that the performance was executed, not just described.

**What OIP should take from this.** Explicit separation of capability description (what you CAN do — an assertive) from invocation request (what you ARE doing — a directive or commissive). The receipt proves the illocution occurred, not that it was possible.

### Sources

- Austin, J.L. *How to Do Things with Words*. Harvard University Press, 1962.
- Searle, John R. *Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language*. Cambridge University Press, 1969.
- Searle, John R. *Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts*. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

---

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- [Self-describing protocol](https://miscsubjects.com/a/what-is-self-describing-protocol)

## Related on this shelf

- [Alan Kay — The Big Idea Is Messaging](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-alan-kay)
- [Alfred North Whitehead — Process and Reality](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-alfred-north-whitehead)
- [Barbara Liskov — Abstract Data Types and Distributed Consensus](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-barbara-liskov)
- [Bram Cohen — BitTorrent and Content-Addressed Protocol Design](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-bram-cohen)
- [Butler Lampson — Protection and Access Control](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-butler-lampson)
- [Carl Hewitt — The Actor Model](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-carl-hewitt)
- [Charles Sanders Peirce — Signs, Abduction, and Pragmatism](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-charles-peirce)
- [Doug Engelbart — Augmenting Human Intellect](https://miscsubjects.com/a/thinker-doug-engelbart)

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