John R. Searle, "Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts"

The distinction between locutionary acts (or, more specifically, rhetic acts) and illocutionary acts cannot be sustained. There are locutionary acts like "I hereby promise to come", which in virtue of meaning what they do, perform an illocutionary act. The locutionary act should be replaced with the propositional act, which is the expression of a certain proposition.

Jerrold Katz, "Literal Meaning and Logical Theory"

Searle's argument against context-independent literal meaning assumes that issues of linguistic competence and understanding involve broad issues of use, but Katz rejects that assumption, claiming that there is a narrow conception of linguistic competence that is sharply distinguished from linguistic performance.

John Searle, "Literal Meaning"

The received view that the literal meaning of a sentence is its context-free truth conditions (once ambiguity, indexicality, etc. have been settled) is mistaken; sentences have meanings (truth conditions) only against a background of assumptions; variations in background assumptions produce variations in truth conditions.