ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a special kind of human action which the author calls linguistic action. It refers the linguistic expressions, which are linguistic action verbs (LAV); some of them being explicit performative verbs (EPV) which describe the speech act they help perform. The chapter examines what kind of preferred description speakers conventionally choose to give of their own linguistic actions and how they organize the experience of linguistic action in a system of beliefs and schematizations. The chapter argues that LAVs in performative contexts can only function relative to cognitive models which correspond to our understanding of the speech act. The goal of the chapter is threefold. These includes to describe the manner adverbials that occur in performative contexts and to find out what are the preferred descriptions for specific speech acts; To understand the relationship between preferred descriptions and the kind of speech act being performed; To interpret this process of selection in a cognitive perspective.
