Editing John Searle (section)

===Speech acts===
Searle's early work, which did much to establish his reputation, was on [[speech act]]s. He attempted to synthesize ideas from many colleagues – including [[J. L. Austin]] (the "[[illocutionary act]]", from ''[[J. L. Austin#How To Do Things with Words|How To Do Things with Words]]''), [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] and [[G. C. J. Midgley]] (the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules) – with his own thesis that such acts are constituted by the [[rules of language]]. He also drew on the work of [[Paul Grice]] (the analysis of meaning as an attempt at being understood), Hare and Stenius (the distinction, concerning meaning, between illocutionary force and propositional content), [[P. F. Strawson]], [[John Rawls]] and [[William Alston]], who maintained that sentence meaning consists in sets of regulative rules requiring the speaker to perform the illocutionary act indicated by the sentence and that such acts involve the utterance of a sentence which (a) indicates that one performs the act; (b) means what one says; and (c) addresses an audience in the vicinity.

In his 1969 book ''Speech Acts'', Searle sets out to combine all these elements to give his account of [[illocutionary act]]s. There, he provides an analysis of what he considers the prototypical illocutionary act of promising and offers sets of semantical rules intended to represent the [[linguistic meaning]] of devices indicating further illocutionary act types. Among concepts presented in the book is the distinction between the "illocutionary force" and the "propositional content" of an [[utterance]]. Searle does not precisely define the former as such, but rather introduces several possible illocutionary forces by example. According to Searle, the sentences...
# Sam smokes habitually.
# Does Sam smoke habitually?
# Sam, smoke habitually!
# Would that Sam smoked habitually!

... each indicate the same propositional content (Sam smoking habitually) but differ in the illocutionary force indicated (respectively, a statement, a question, a command and an expression of desire).<ref>{{cite book |author=John R. Searle |title=Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1969 |isbn=9780521096263}}</ref>

According to a later account, which Searle presents in ''Intentionality'' (1983) and which differs in important ways from the one suggested in ''Speech Acts'', illocutionary acts are characterised by having "conditions of satisfaction", an idea adopted from Strawson's 1971 paper "Meaning and Truth", and a "[[direction of fit]]", an idea adopted from Austin and [[Elizabeth Anscombe]]. For example, the statement "John bought two candy bars" is satisfied if and only if it is true, i.e., John did buy two candy bars. By contrast, the command "John, buy two candy bars!" is satisfied if and only if John carries out the action of purchasing two candy bars. Searle refers to the first as having the "word-to-world" direction of fit, since the words are supposed to change to accurately represent the world, and the second as having the "world-to-word" direction of fit, since the world is supposed to change to match the words. There is also the double direction of fit, in which the relationship goes both ways, and the null or zero direction of fit, in which it goes neither way because the propositional content is presupposed, as in "I am sorry I ate John's candy bars."

In ''Foundations of Illocutionary Logic''<ref>{{cite book |author=John R. Searle, Daniel Vanderveken |title=Foundations of Illocutionary Logic |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1985 |isbn=978-0-521-26324-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M_c8AAAAIAAJ}}</ref> (1985, with Daniel Vanderveken), Searle prominently uses the notion of the "illocutionary point".<ref>Although Searle does not mention earlier uses of the concept, it originates from [http://philpapers.org/rec/SESP Alexander Sesonske's article "Performatives"].</ref>

Searle's speech-act theory has been challenged by several thinkers in various ways. Collections of articles referring to Searle's account are found in Burkhardt 1990<ref>Burkhardt, Armin (ed.), ''Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle''. Berlin / New York 1990.</ref> and Lepore / van Gulick 1991.<ref>Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds): ''John Searle and his Critics''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991.</ref>