I struggle with the notion of speech acts. I'm not sure if it's difficult to approach the topic with a disposition towards stupid and common sense, but I suppose I lack the higher-level abilities to differentiate between a speech act on the one hand and an act of speech on the other. So I seek help.

These disabilities limit me to see one act and one act only: the act of speech. To me, saying “I promise” is an act of speech. A speaker moves the mouth, makes the sounds, articulates the syllables, and so on. This act, such as it is, is physical, visible, involves bodily movements and measurable forces. One is actually doing something, namely, speaking, and in so doing affecting the world with these and only these movements. But I am told that other less apparent acts are occurring here as well.

We are told of locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary acts. One can peruse the literature as to what the authors mean by these terms, but the important point for now is that they are considered as acts of some kind.

The questions are: how are these acts distinct from the act of speaking? Where in space and time occurs the performance of these acts? Where in space and time lie the consequences and effects of these acts? Is a speaker actually doing something with words?

To the last question, that the words are a consequence of his actions, and not yet present at the time of the act of speech, makes it difficult to agree that he is doing something with words as if he picked them up and started to arrange them in this or that combination. He's doing something with his mouth or vocal chords, certainly, but doing something with another thing suggests that that thing exists beforehand, and not necessarily as a product of that action. When one bakes a cake he is not doing something with a cake. When one eats a cake, he is doing something with a cake.

As for the other questions, JL Austin notes the difficulty of his nomenclature.

“It has, of course, been admitted that to perform an illocutionary act is necessarily to perform a locutionary act: that, for example, to congratulate is necessarily to say certain words; and to say certain words is necessarily, at least in part, to make certain more or less indescribable movements with the vocal organ. So that the divorce between 'physical' actions and acts of saying something is not in all ways complete—there is some connexion. But (i) while this may be important in some connexions and contexts, it does not seem to prevent the drawing of a line for our present purposes where we want one, that is, between the completion of the illocutionary act and all consequences thereafter.”

- How to do things with Words - p. 113 - Austin

But the nomenclature could prove disastrous insofar as one could mislead himself upon accepting it. Might the metaphor be taken literally? Might people believe they are performing two acts where they are performing one?

In my view, what may resolve the issue is including within the nomenclature a host of other acts, actual acts, namely, listening acts. Here, a listener or reader is actually doing something with words: hearing them, reading them, understanding them, considering them, and so on. These acts, such as they are, are physical, visible, involves bodily movements and measurable forces. In fact, how one takes the words, uses them, and applies them in his conduct might be the most important acts involved in the entire interaction.

Perhaps I am misreading or completely distorting Austin's theory. Any advice?