ABSTRACT
J .L . Austin thought that the study of language had been too much focused on words, and that the study of action had been too much focused on 'ordinary physical actions': he thought that illocution had been neglected (Austin 1962). But for all of Austin's stress on illocutionary acts, I think that he failed to appreciate the significance of his own idea. A n d I think that subsequent writers, having their own agenda, have not understood what underlies it. M y aim in what follows is to provide an account of an idea of illocution which reveals the use of words to be communicative action. In my account, illocution occupies the same sort of theoretical role as it does in Austin's and Searle's.1 But I elucidate it differendy.
