In most proposals for multi-agent systems, an Agent Communication Language (ACL) is the formalism designed to express knowledge
exchange among agents. However, a universally accepted standard for ACLs is still missing. Among the different approaches
to the definition of ACL semantics, the
social approach seems the most appropriate to express semantics of communication in open societies of autonomous and heterogeneous
agents.
In this paper we propose a formalism (deontic constraints) to express social ACL semantics, which can be grounded on a computational logic framework, thus allowing automatic verification
of compliance by means of appropriate proof procedures. We also show how several common communication performatives can be
defined by means of deontic constraints.