Speech Act Quotes

Words are also actions.

The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting.

The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.

[William Jennings Bryan] thinks that to say something is to do something, which is an imperfect view of administration.

The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second “you.

Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can't be unthought.

Of course, we have known for a long time that a word, like any verbal sign, is a unity of two components.

The assertion fallacy is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

The closed language does not demonstrate and explain it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes "separation of good from evil;" it establishes unquestionable

Almost certainly I will not tell her my intentions this evening or tonight. I will put it off. Why? Because words are actions and they make things happen. Once they are out you cannot put them back.

I must use beautiful words. I never know when I might have to eat them.

An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.

I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.

There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world.

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.