In speech-act theory, the act of making a meaningful utterance, a stretch of spoken language preceded by silence and followed by silence or a change of speaker, is

The locutionary act is the act of making a meaningful utterance, a stretch of speech bounded by silence or a change of speaker.

The making of a request, offer, joke or promise in uttering a sentence is the illocutionary act, not this bare production of speech.

The effect that an utterance brings about in the audience is the perlocutionary act, again distinct from the act of uttering itself.

Since the locutionary act names the utterance act precisely, none-of-the-above does not apply.

Austin framed this three-way distinction of speech acts.

Emoticons, by contrast, mainly signal illocutionary force rather than the locutionary act.