Speech acts are a significant part of everyday communication; they show how a speaker’s utterance can not only describe or signify an action, but also perform an action on its own. The aim of this diploma paper was to determine the frequency and nature of use of particular speech acts in chosen works through analysis according to Searle’s speech act categories. For this analysis, two most important aspects were familiarising with theoretical framework and Searle’s speech act categories, and closely observing the context of each utterance. Throughout the analysis, 11 829 speech acts in total were found in chosen books (Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”, and Cornelia Funke’s “Inkheart”) and films (Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” and Iain Softley’s “Inkheart”). The most common speech act category found were representatives. Directives were the second most frequent category, while other categories were much less frequent than these two. The reason for this result is that actions of representatives and directives are rarely able to be performed without utterances, while it is not the case with commissives and expressives. Declarations, however, also rely more heavily on uttering, but the circumstances for this speech act category are quite rare