Felicity Conditions of Illocutionary Acts in NAFDAC Media Publications

While NAFDAC’s statements regulate public health, little is known about how they fulfill felicity conditions. This study explores how NAFDAC’s institutional utterances perform regulatory actions through language using J. L. Austin’s (1962) Speech Act Theory, particularly the concept of felicity conditions. Adopting a qualitative research approach, it analyzes how NAFDAC’s verified communications satisfy the conditions necessary for successful performative acts. Three texts were purposively selected: a verified Twitter (X) post on sealing Chinese supermarkets, a Punch publication on banning 101 drugs, and a Facebook post on closing an illegal herbal facility. Using pragmatic discourse analysis, the study examined how these utterances fulfill the Preparatory, Propositional Content, Sincerity, and Essential Conditions, showing that institutional authority, clarity, and sincerity enable performative success. The findings reveal that NAFDAC’s language not only informs but also performs or transforms words into regulatory actions that ban, seal, and warn. The study concludes that felicity conditions illuminate how institutional discourse wields language as a tool of enforcement and governance. Received: 21 November 2025 / Accepted: 29 December 2025 / Published: January 2026