How are we to study complex speech acts such as the text of Jeremiah? How can understanding these complex speech acts both shed light on the larger text and the smaller text portions and reveal how a larger text employs smaller texts within a more complex speech act? In A (S)Word against Babylon, Holroyd proposes a multilevel speech act approach and demonstrates it with the oracle against Babylon in MT Jeremiah.

This study endeavors to expand the works of Walter Houston, Jim Adams, and Steven Mann by further exploring indirect speech acts, illocutionary compatibility, and studies of the performative nature of liturgy. Holroyd applies this more-expansive application of performative theories of language to the oracle against Babylon in MT Jeremiah 50–51 to study the illocutionary force of the oracle against Babylon on some of its many levels, including lower levels in which the oracle performs to Babylon and to Israel and higher levels in which the oracle performs within the collection of foreign nation oracles and the larger text of MT Jeremiah.