Introducing English Linguistics

non-literal
. If a speech act is explicit, it will contain a performative verb,
Speech act theory
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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a verb that names the speech act and has a very specific structure. For
instance, even though both of the examples below are apologies (a type of
expressive), only the first example contains a performative verb:
I was abominably ill-mannered, and I apologize. 
(BNC AN8 1949)
You guys I’m sorry that I was late
(MICASE SGR200JU125)
Apologize is a performative verb because it literally names the speech act
that the sentence represents. In addition, it is in the present tense and
occurs with a first person pronoun. Note that if the subject and verb tense
are changed, a very different sentence results, one in which no real apol-
ogy is being made by the speaker but instead an apology given by some-
body else at some other time is described:
He apologized for all the harm he’d done.
While You guys I’m sorry that I was late is also an apology, here the apology
is implicit because the verb am (contracted in I’m) does not fit the struc-
tural definition of a performative verb: the naming of the speech act is
conveyed by the adjective sorry, not the verb am.
Additional examples of performative verbs are given below for each of
the five types of speech acts: