Speech act

Utterance that serves a performative function

In the philosophy of language and linguistics, a speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. The phrase "I resign" is a classic example of a speech act as the very act of saying the words enacts the resignation. According to Kent Bach, "almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience".

From Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA. More on occurri.