ABSTRACT
J. L. Austin called our attention to what he called a “performative” utterance of a declarative sentence, whereby one performs a conventional social act but does not state or describe anything-for example, “I apologize” or (in a game of bridge) “I double.” The kinds of acts that can be performed in this way are called speech acts. Each type of speech act is governed by rules of two sorts: constitutive rules, which must be obeyed if the act is to have been accomplished at all, and regulative rules, violation of which merely renders the act defective or, in Austin’s word, infelicitous. There are many and surprisingly various ways in which a given speech act can be infelicitous.
