Felicity condition

Felicity condition is a convention regulating the appropriate use of performative utterances. The felicity conditions for the utterance in (i) say - among other things - that the speaker must have the authority to marry two people:

(i) I hereby declare you husband and wife

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 1990. Meaning and grammar, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.