Kent Bach and Robert M. Harnish (1979), Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, xvii + 327 pp. — https://lccn.loc.gov/79015892
Key takeaways
Filed, not read: no lawful full text was reachable (see the history note). Known here only by its standard description: an inferential theory of communication in which the hearer reaches the speaker’s illocutionary intent through a schema of inferences from the words, the literal content and mutual contextual beliefs. It gives a taxonomy of communicative illocutions (constatives, directives, commissives and acknowledgments) and treats conventional illocutions, in Strawson’s sense, separately.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-13 at the owner’s request, as one of the four works of the intention-based line that CLAIM-221 and QUESTION-073 name as missing from the record. See the curation entry of that day. Of the four it is the one that applies the intention-based account to a full range of act types, so it is the reading most likely to say whether teasing and reproach can be told apart by intention alone.