ABSTRACT
A speech act fails in its per-illocutionary aspect if the speaker does not succeed in bringing about the intended response in his hearer. Like every intentional act, a concrete speech act is analysable into its various elements: a locution in which a number of illocutions are performed, by which, in turn, various per-illocutions are performed. These different aspects of a concrete speech act never occur on their own. A translation succeeds if we replace a locution in one language by a locution in another language without altering the illocutionary load of the speech act that we perform when uttering either of these two locutions. A concrete speech act is never purely expressive. An expressive function is never more than one element in the illocutionary load of a speech act. Locutions are subject to the rules of grammar, and thus to the language in which they are expressed.
