information:extraction
Performative speech acts

An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the utterance of what Austin calls performative utterances, typical instances of which are "I nominate John to be President", "I sentence you to ten years' imprisonment", or "I promise to pay you back." In these typical, rather explicit cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself. J.L. Austin claimed that performative sentences could be "happy or unhappy". They were only happy if the speaker does the actions he or she talks about. They were unhappy if this did not happen. Performative speech acts also use explicit verbs instead of implicit ones. For example, stating "I intend to go." does convey information, but it does not really mean that you are promising to go; so it does not count as "performing" an action ("such as" the action of promising to go). Therefore, it is an implicit verb; i.e., a verb that would not be suitable for use in performative speech acts.