Theory of Speech Acts

Theory of Speech Acts is a philosophical theory presented in 1962 by John Langshaw Austin, a professor of moral philosophy at Oxford University; then it was developed further in Speech Acts Written by his student, John R. Searle, who is a contemporary philosopher of mind and language.The Speech-act Theory aims to represent a comprehensive analysis of the language use and the way of communication, and finally it answers to a main and basic question in philosophy of language: How one can attain a series of semantic features such as meaningfulness, meaninglessness, truth, description, predication, and communication through not so much complex phenomena such as speech sounds or written letters and words.The Theory of Speech Acts can be regarded as significant for two reasons: First, it was probably the initial strong attempt on philosophical speculation, which had destructively been attacked by Wittgenstein. Second, it has been somehow successful. Over forty years after presenting the Speech-act Theory, nowadays philosophers still deal with its requirements and results.