Malinowski claims that the central character of languages is as ‘a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection’. This view emphasises the role of language in ‘practical action’ and as a ‘link in concerted human activity, as a piece of human behaviour’. (Ogden&Richards,1949)

Wittgenstein also came to think of language not primarily as a system of representation but as a vehicle for all sorts of social activity. 'Don't ask for the meaning', he admonished, 'ask for the use'.

Austin's attention was first attracted to what he called 'explicit performative utterances', in which one uses sentences like 'I nominate ...', 'You're fired', 'The meeting is adjourned', and 'You are hereby sentenced ...' to perform acts of the very sort named by the verb, such as nominating, firing, adjourning, or sentencing

Austin identifies three distinct levels of action beyond the act of utterance itself. He distinguishes the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, and what one does by saying it, and dubs these the 'locutionary', the 'illocutionary' and the 'perlocutionary' act, respectively

“The bar will be closed in five minutes”

The theory of speech acts aims to do justice to the fact that even though words (phrases, sentences) encode information, people do more things with words than convey information and that when people do convey information, they often convey more than their words encode. Although the focus of speech act theory has been on utterances, especially those made in conversational and other face-to-face situations, the phrase 'speech act' should be taken as a generic term for any sort of language use, oral or otherwise. Speech acts, whatever the medium of their performance, fall under the broad category of intentional action, with which they share certain general features

Communicative success is achieved if the speaker chooses his words in such a way that the hearer will, under the circumstances of utterance, recognize his communicative intention. So, for example, if you spill some beer on someone and say 'Oops' in the right way, your utterance will be taken as an apology for what you did

Constatives: affirming, alleging, announcing, answering, attributing, claiming, classifying, concurring, confirming, conjecturing, denying, disagreeing, disclosing, disputing, identifying, informing, insisting, predicting, ranking, reporting, stating, stipulating

Directives: advising, admonishing, asking, begging, dismissing, excusing, forbidding, instructing, ordering, permitting, requesting, requiring, suggesting, urging, warning

Commissives: agreeing, guaranteeing, inviting, offering, promising, swearing, volunteering

Acknowledgments: apologizing, condoling, congratulating, greeting, thanking, accepting (acknowledging an acknowledgment) (Bach and Harnish)

Grice’s Theory of Maxims : not rules, strategies and precepts

Cooperation Principle : make your conversational contribution such as is required, by the excepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

Maxim of Quantity : make your contribution as informative as is required giving new or unpredictable knowledge. ( How was your exam ? – “it was O.K”)

Maxim of Quality : truthfulness, not false or inadequate information. ( Is the house sold – “it is partly sold”)

Maxim of Relation : be relevant, knowledge related to the topic, which would be useful in attaining some goal, intentoinal irrelevance diverts the discourse into unplanned direction.

( How was your exam? – “what’s for lunch?”)

Maxim of Manner : be perspicious, be such that the intentions you have for what you say are plainly served, avouid obscurity of expression, avouid ambiguity( not understanding which sense is actually intended, polyvalance : multiple senses intended), be brief, be orderly (present your materials in the order in which they’re required,normal oredering strategies)

Conventional Implicatures : imply, suggest, mean not saying; conventional participants infer the unexpected content.

Text producers are merely trying to communicate with a minimum of needless effort and disturbance, they can even violate the maxims.