Page "Speech act" Paragraph 5

An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the utterance of what Austin calls performatives, typical instances of which are " I nominate John to be President ", " I sentence you to ten years ' imprisonment ", or " I promise to pay you back.

" In these typical, rather explicit cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence describes ( nominating, sentencing, promising ) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself.