Illocutionary act is a technical term introduced by John L. Austin in investigations concerning what he calls 'performative' and 'constative utterances'. According to Austin's original exposition in How to Do Things With Words, an illocutionary act is an act (1) for the performance of which I must make it clear to some other person that the act is performed (Austin speaks of the 'securing of uptake'), and (2) the performance of which involves the production of what Austin calls 'conventional consequences' as, e.g., rights, commitments, or obligations. For example, in order to successfully perform a promise I must make clear to my audience that the promise occurs, and undertake an obligation to do the promised thing: hence promising is an illocutionary act in the present sense. However, for certain reasons, among them insufficient knowledge of Austin's original exposition, the term 'illocutionary act' is nowadays understood in a number of other ways. John Langshaw Austin (March 28, 1911 – February 8, 1960) was a philosopher of language, who developed much of the current theory of speech acts. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Performative. ...

Many define the term with reference to examples, saying such things as that any speech act like stating, asking, commanding, promising, and so on is an illocutionary act; they then often fail to give any sense of the expression illocutionary act capable of making clear what being an illocutionary act essentially consists in. The speech act is a concept in linguistics and the philosophy of language. ...

It is also often emphasised that Austin introduced the illocutionary act by means of a contrast with other kinds of acts: the illocutionary act, he says, is an act performed in saying something, as contrasted with a locutionary act, the act of saying something, and also contrasted with a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. An locutionary act is a simple speech act. ... A perlocutionary act is any speech act that amounts to persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something. ...

Still another conception of an illocutionary act goes back to Schiffer's famous book 'Meaning' (1972, 103), in which the illocutionary act is represented as just the act of meaning something.

According to the conception Bach and Harnish adopt in 'Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts' (1979), an illocutionary act is an attempt to communicate, which they again analyse as the expressing of an attitude.

According to a widespread opinion, an adequate and useful account of "illocutionary acts" has been provided by John R. Searle (e.g., 1969, 1979). In recent years, however, it has repeatedly been doubted whether Searle's account is well-founded. A wide-ranging critique is in F C Doerge Illocutionary Acts^[1]. Whole collections of articles examining Searle's account are: Burkhardt 1990 ^[2] and Lepore / van Gulick 1991^[3]. John Searle is a philosopher at UC Berkeley. ...

Illocutionary force

The notion of an illocutionary force remains rather unclear in Austin's original account. Some followers of Austin, such as David Holdcroft, view illocutionary force as the property of an utterance to be made with the intention to perform a certain illocutionary act -- rather than as the successful performance of the act (which is supposed further to require the appropriateness of certain circumstances). According to this conception, my utterance of "I bet you five pounds that it will rain" may well have an illocutionary force even if you don't hear me. However, Bach and Harnish assume illocutionary force just in case this or that illocutionary act is actually (successfully) performed. According to this conception, you must have heard and understood that the speaker intends to make a bet with you in order for the utterance to have 'illocutionary force'.

Some utterances' (intended) illocutionary force is not quite obvious: if someone says, "it sure is cold in here", there are several different illocutionary acts that might be aimed at by the utterance. The utterer might intend to describe the room, in which case the illocutionary force would be that of 'describing'. But she might also intend to criticise someone who should have kept the room warm. Or it might be meant as a request to someone to close the window. These forces may be interrelated: it may be by way of stating that the temperature is too cold that one criticises someone else. Such a performance of an illocutionary act by means of the performance of another is referred to as an indirect speech act.

Illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs)

Illocutionary force indicating devices are those elements or aspects of linguistic devices which indicate either (dependent on which conceptions of "illocutionary force" and "illocutionary act" are adopted) that the utterance is made with a certain illocutionary force, or else that it constitutes the performance of a certain illocutionary act. In English, for example, the interrogative mood indicates that the utterance is (intended as) a question; the directive mood indicates that the utterance is (intended as) a directive illocutionary act (an order, a request, etc.); the words "I promise" indicate that the utterance is (intended as) a promise. Examples of IFIDs in English include: word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of the verb, and performative verbs.

Illocutionary negations

An illocutionary negation can be distinguished from a propositional negation by considering the difference between "I do not promise to come." and "I promise not to come." The first is an illocutionary negation - the 'not' negates the promise. The second is a propositional negation. Generally, illocutionary negations change the type of illocutionary act.

See also

• J. L. Austin
• linguistics
• performative utterance
• perlocutionary act
• pragmatics
• semantics

John Langshaw Austin (March 28, 1911 - February 8, 1960) was a philosopher of language, who developed much of the current theory of speech acts. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Performative. ... A perlocutionary act is any speech act that amounts to persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something. ... In linguistics and semiotics, pragmatics is concerned with bridging the explanatory gap between sentence meaning and speakers meaning. ... Semantics (Greek semantikos, giving signs, significant, symptomatic, from sema, sign) refers to the aspects of meaning that are expressed in a language, code, or other form of representation. ...

References

• Alston, William P.. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Ithaka: Cornell University Press. 2000
• Austin, John L.. How To Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1975 ISBN 0-19-281205-X
• Burkhardt, Armin (ed.). Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Berlin / New York 1990 ISBN 0-89925-357-1
• Doerge, Friedrich Christoph. Illocutionary Acts - Austin's Account and What Searle Made Out of It. Tuebingen 2006. [1]
• Lepore, Ernest / van Gulick, Robert (eds). John Searle and his Critics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991. ISBN 0-631-15636-4
• Searle, John R.. Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press. 1969 ISBN 0-521-07184-4
• Searle, John R.. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge University Press. 1979 ISBN 0-521-22901-4