The paper discusses the relationship of Austin's notions of the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts with his conception of action as it emerges from How to Do Things with Words and from his later papers in the philosophy of action. This conception of action, which highlights the agent's responsibility in bringing about an effect, is shown to help us solve some classical problems in speech act theory, particularly as regards the distinction between the locutionary and illocutionary acts, and the definition of perlocution. Thus, in Austin's philosophy, speech act theory and the philosophy of action appear to be closely related to each other, as is confirmed by an intriguing analogy indicated in one of Austin's unpublished notes.
