The Illocutionary Aspect of Utterances

The first part of this paper criticizes Austin's and Searle's claim that utterances have illocutionary force. It is shown that illocutionary force is the sense of illocutionary descriptive terms, but illocutionary verbs are not names of a definite aspect of utterances. In the second and third parts an alternative account of the illocutionary aspect of utterances is offered, an account which sees illocution as the way in which utterances meaningfully relate to the state of affairs in the world.