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He warned me against my going
there.
Perlocutionary act: He stopped me.
He brought me to my senses.
He annoyed me.

SPEECH ACT FUNCTIONS AND SUBFUNCTIONS

CLASSIFICATION OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
Austin and other philosophers tried to understand how an infinite number of
sentences might reflect a very finite set of functions. They concluded that since the
number of things we do with words is limited, we ought to be able to assign functions to
utterances. The problem with assigning functions to sentences is that speaker intent and
sentence meaning are not always the same, and no utterance is completely context free
in terms of meaning or function. Nevertheless, linguists and philosophers (J.R. Searle, R.
Ohmann, Bach K. And Harnish R., J.D.McCawley, Vendler) have given much attention to
differences among illocutionary speech acts and proposed various typologies to classify
them.
Though Austin was the first to delineate illocutionary acts distinguishing five general
classes – verdicatives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, expositives, – the most
prominent taxonomy belongs to J.R. Searle. In his article entitled “Classification of
Illocutionary acts” John Searle also pointed out that there is an endless number of
illocutionary acts. There are statements, assertions, denials, requests, commands,
warnings, promises, vows, offers, apologies, thanks, condolences, appointments,
namings, resignations, etc. At the same time, he observed that some illocutionary acts
are more closely related than others. His classification is the following (1976: 10-13):

General functions of speech acts (Searle 1979)

Speech act type Direction of fit S = speaker Examples
X = situation
1. Representatives make words fit the S believes X
world
2. Expressives make words fit the S feels X Thanks for your help.
world
3. Directives make the world fit S wants X Do that job!
words
4. Commissives make the world fit S intends X I promise to come
words
5. Declarations words change the S causes X You are fired.
world

1. Representatives are utterances used to describe some state of affairs. They commit
the speaker (in varying degree) to smth’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed
proposition. This class includes statements of facts, assertions, conclusions,