Illocutionary Acts and Sentence MeaningWhat is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that William P. Alston, one of America's most distinguished and prolific analytic philosophers, addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language. His answer focuses on the given sentence's potential to play the role that its speaker had in mindwhat he terms the usability of the sentence to perform the illocutionary act intended by its speaker. Alston defines an