Speech Acts Introduction Speech act theory is the first major theory in pragmatics, initially proposed in the 50s and widely discussed in the 60s and 70s. John L austin one of the ordinary language philosophers at Oxford began a series of lectures at Harvard University in 1955 His posthumous work How to Do Things with Words had an enormous impact on linguistic philosophy, and thereby on linguistics, especially in its pragmatic variant.Speech Acts • Introduction • Speech act theory is the first major theory in pragmatics , initially proposed in the 50s and widely discussed in the 60s and 70s. • John L. Austin , one of the ordinary language philosophers at Oxford , began a series of lectures at Harvard University in1955. • His posthumous work How to Do Things with Words had an enormous impact on linguistic philosophy, and thereby on linguistics, especially in its pragmatic variant