Abstract: A historical examination of "speech" and "act" in a conceptual network of "thinking", "mind", "body", "society" and "material" reveals that there are plenty of ways to understand them. According to the primitive concept of mantra, speech can directly influence material without the medium of act. According to the concept of karma in Buddhism, "mind", "speech" and "body" are a set of parallel concepts, while "act" is their upperseat concept. Christianity attaches great importance to the role of speech, believing that it directly creates body, material and act. "Speech" and "act" are dichotomous concepts in Confucian political philosophy and ethics. Psychological behaviorism holds that speech is the act of body under conditioned stimulus. Daily language schools claim that speech is act from the perspective opposing logic positivism. While body linguistics considers act as a subtype of speech from the perspective of semiotics. From the perspective of existentialism, physical phenomenology reduces speech to a kind of act. In short, a historical study of concepts should pay attention to conceptual relationship rather than merely one concept.

Key words: speech, act, body, conceptual history, conceptual relationship