Illocutionary act

The concept of illocutionary acts was introduced into linguistics by the philosopher J. L. Austin in his investigation of the various aspects of speech acts. In his framework, locution is what was said, illocution is what was meant, and perlocution is the way it was received.

When somebody says "Is there any salt?" at the dinner table, the illocutionary act is a request: "please give me some salt" even though the locutionary act (the literal sentence) was to ask a question about the presence of salt. The perlocutionary act (the actual effect), might be to cause somebody to pass the salt.