Requesting

Taken from 'Reasoning About Rational Agents' (2000), by Michael Wooldridge

Request speech acts (directives) are attempts by a speaker to modify the intentions of the hearer. However, we can identify at least two different types of requests:

- Requests to bring about some state of affairs: An example of such a request would be when one agent said "Keep the door closed." We call such requests "requests-that".

- Requests to perform some particular action: An example of such a request would be when one agent said "Lock the door." We call such requests "requests-to".

Requests-that are more general than requests-to. In the former case (requests-that), the agent communicates an intended state of affairs, but does not communicate the means to achieve this state of affairs... In the case of requesting to, however, the agent does not communicate the desired state of affairs at all. Instead, it communicates an action to be performed, and the state of affairs to be acieved lies implicit within the action that was communicated...