This contribution purports to develop an Austinian speech act theory, in which the illocutionary act is described as the communicative move to the hearer that the speaker evaluates her present utterance as. In saying a performative or non-performative utterance, the speaker specifies or indicates the value of the communicative move in identifying herself as a particular addresser, the present hearer as a particular addressee, and the circumstances as a particular context. On the basis of this understanding, this paper examines different elements in terms of which the success or failure of performing an illocutionary act is determined, which indicates how illocutionary acts are situated in context.