 First, proponents of the Assurance View maintain that the speech act of telling is key to understanding the relationship that a speaker has with their audience. This is because when a speaker tells their audience that p is true, she is doing much more than merely uttering p. Rather, she is inviting her audience to trust her that p is true; that is, she is assuring, or guaranteeing her audience that p is the case. More specifically, in order for a hearer to acquire testimonial justification, the speaker must tell them that p is true, where telling is understood along the following lines: