Wortham, Stanton2023-05-222023-05-221997-09-012007-06-01https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/34846Modern analyses of language use have come to focus as much on what we do with language as on what we say with it (e.g., Austin 1975 [1956]; Goffman 1974; Gumperz and Hymes 1972; Searle 1969; Wittgenstein 1953). With this shift to studying language's interactional functions has come an apparently simple question: how does a stretch of talk come to count as a particular type of interactional event? Answers to this question relied at first on the denotational functions of language. In the prototypical cases presented by Austin (1975 [1956]), an utterance signals an interactional event through the denotational value of certain predicating formulae. Uttered in appropriate circumstances, I promise both denotes and accomplishes a speech act.Educational FoundationsArticle