Mechanisms of illocutionary games

• A score-keeping model of illocutionary games is developed.
• Two mechanisms responsible for creating institutional facts are discussed.
• The phenomenon of accommodation occurs in illocutionary games.
• The proposed model presupposes an externalist account of illocutionary interaction.

The paper develops a score-keeping model of illocutionary games and uses it to account for mechanisms responsible for creating institutional facts construed as rights and commitments of participants in a dialogue. After introducing the idea of Austinian games—understood as abstract entities representing different levels of the functioning of discourse—the paper defines the main categories of the proposed model: interactional negotiation, illocutionary score, appropriateness rules and kinematics rules. Finally, it discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in illocutionary games and argues that the proposed model presupposes an externalist account of illocutionary practice.