Doing Things with Words

Austin is the main guy. He distinguished locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary force.

Locutionary Force

The locutionary force of an utterance is its propositional content, where that term is not take to mean that there are such things as propositions.

Illocutionary Force

We can use language in many ways. We can assert, state, swear, promise, bet, threaten, dub (name), marry, tease, ask, request, command, and so on. In doing all of those things, the utterances we use usually have locutionary force (that is, there is something that they say that), but they also have the additional property of asserting, or stating, or swearing, or .... That is the illocutionary force. Often the same utterance type can be used with a variety of illocutionary forces:

Do you have a cigarette?

There's the door.

We have a variety of expressions that make the illocutionary force of an utterance explicit, but they are not necessary to the use of the force, at least most of the time.

I state that I have never been a member of the Communist party.

I do.

I raise you five.

I ask, what is your name?

Austin proposed the "hereby test" for assertions of illocutionary force: If you can preface a word with "hereby" it is giving the force.

I hereby state that I have never been a member of the Communist party.

I hereby raise you five.

The test isn't perfect:

* I hereby do.

but it can often be "fixed":

I hereby do marry you.

Some sentences have illocutionary force without any apparent content:

Damn!

The distinctive feature of illocutionary force is that it is entirely up to the speaker what the illocutionary force is. When I promise, just by saying something with the appropriate illocutionary force, I succeed in promising. Similarly, at least supposedly, for the other cases of illocutionary force. There are always some conditions on the utterances of two types: constitutive and regulatory rules. Constitutive rules are necessary for the act to have the force at all. Thus, for example, saying "I do" when the person performing the wedding ceremony does not have the power to marry or, perhaps, when suitable licenses have not been obtained, does not succeed in marrying. Regulatory rules are normal expected rules of success, and the failure of regulatory rules can lead to various "infelicities." One example of being infelicitous is (contrary to many linguists) being false. Commanding something that cannot be done: "Give me a trillion dollars," promising without any intention of fulfilling the promise, "I'll give you a great deal on that car," marrying only to get a visa are just some examples of the incredible variety of infelicities that are possible for various kinds of speech acts.

Cohen's Problem

When I say "I raise you five" I have not, according to Austin, said that I am going to raise you five, I have raised you five. The words do not say that you are going to do something, they just do it. That seems right in cases in which there are no linguistic items that mark force. When I state, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party" I am not stating that I am stating anything, I am just stating it. But, when I state "the same thing" by saying "I state that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party," what is going on? I am certainly not just stating that I am making a statement, because what I said would be infelicitous if I had been a member of the Communist Party. But it seems that I am also stating that I am so stating. I, personally, favor the simple conjunctive theory that what I am doing is stating that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party and stating that I am so stating, but there are cases where that doesn't quite account for the data ("raising"), and no one has a satisfactory theory.

Perlocutionary Force

It is also possible to use an utterance to attempt to do something to someone else, but it is only in the power of the other person whether it succeeds: frightening and persuading are examples. Austin calls that perlocutionary force.

There is a turf battle about whether illocutionary force and perlocutionary force are a part of pragmatics or of semantics, but at any rate, any adequate theory of language must give some account somewhere of force, and none of the semantic theories we have considered does, and most of them have no hope of doing so. Consider, for example, truth condition theories.

No one has any decent theories, except, perhaps, of very specific forces. (Questions, commands.)

-- ShaughanLavine - 09 Mar 2006