S. does not want to provide a classification of illocutionary or performative verbs, but of illocutionary acts. He distinguishes, mainly on the basis of his speech act analysis in J.R. Searle (1969: 'Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy oflanguage'), twelve dimensions along which speech acts or illocutionary acts can differ. Then he points out weaknesses in Austin's (1962: 'How to do things with words') taxonomy and proposes an alternative one. He distinguishes five classes of illocutionary acts: representatives, the point of which is to represent a state of affairs (e.g. to state, to describe); directives, the point of which is to make the hearer do something (e.g. to command); commissives, by means of which the speaker commits himself to doing something (e.g. to promise); expressives, the point of which is to express a psychological state (e.g. to congratulate); declarations, which are used to bring something about in the world (e.g to declare war). Finally, S. shows how the basic illocutionary types he distinguished are realized in the syntax of a natural language such as English.