In a very stimulating and neatly argued paper entitled `On Searle on language', published in Language & Communication, Nigel Love (1999) points out a profoundly contradictory state of aairs besetting the Theory of Speech Acts, in the form in which it has been developed and defended by John R. Searle (passim±-but especially, Searle, 1969, 1979a) over the last three decades or so. The contradiction Ð or what may be characterised, at the very least, as a permanent tension Ð in Searle's version of the theory has to do with the attempt by the Berkeley philosopher to reconcile two trends which, as Love reminds us, are at bottom irreconcilable. On the one hand, Searle has insisted right from the beginning that the fundamental concept that his theory invokes is not that of any of the familiar units of language, as identi®ed by the grammarian. He says: