Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning by William P. Alston
A sentence like "It's locked" has a basic meaning because it is usable to perform the act of asserting that something is locked. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning
Alston’s central thesis is that for a sentence to have a particular meaning is for it to be to perform illocutionary acts of a matching type. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning by William P