Of all the issues in the general theory of language usage, speech act theory has probably aroused the widest interest. Psychologists, forexample, have suggested that the acquisition of the concepts underlying speech acts may be a prerequisite for the acquisition of language in general,literary critics have looked to speech act theory for an illumination of textual subtleties or for an understanding of the nature of literary genres,anthropologists have hoped to find in the theory some account of the nature of magical incantations, philosophers have seen potential applications to,amongst other things, the status of ethical statements, while linguists have seen the notions of speech act theory as variously applicable to problemsin syntax, semantics, second language learning, and elsewhere.