Intention and Convention in Speech Acts

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Abstract
The performance of any speech act involves the observance or exploitation of some linguistic conventions, and every illocutionary act is a speech act. But it is absolutely clear that this is not the point that Austin is making in declaring the illocutionary act to be a conventional act. The contention that illocutionary force is a matter of convention is easily seen to be correct in a great number of cases. For very many kinds of human transaction involving speech are governed and in part constituted by what we easily recognize as established conventions of procedure additional to the conventions governing the meanings of our utterances. Acts belonging to convention-constituted procedures of the kind have just referred to form an important part of human communication. A speaker whose job it is to do so may offer information, instructions, or even advice, and yet be overtly indifferent as to whether or not his information is accepted as such, his instructions followed.

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