Page 475 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

will depend on whomakes the utterance—which deter- mines between 'his' or 'her' car, and when it was uttered—which dates 'yesterday.' The locution The prime minister is an old woman has at least two senses: 'the chief minister within the national parliament is a woman of advanced years' and 'the chief minister within the national parliament is a man who com- plains too much and is over-concerned with trivia.' To decide which of these two senses S is using, H must determine S's act of referring, that is, determine what world and time S is talking about and, as part of that task, determine which entities in that world S is identifying, and what S is saying about (predicating of) those entities (cf. Allan 1986, 1988; Gernsbacher 1990). The same thing can be referred to by different locutionary acts; so, it was once possible for the fol- lowing three locutions to have identical reference: (1) The prime minister is an old woman; (2) Golda Meir is an old woman; (3) Golda Meir, the prime minister, is a woman of advanced years. It is not quite accurate to report that speakers of (1), (2), and (3) have said the same thing; but we might agree that they have said almost the same thing, thereby implicitly recognizing the difference between the locutionary and referential acts. Similarly, the following three locutions could appear in three different utterances in three different languages yet refer to the same dog: (a) The dog's barking! (b) Mbwa anabweka! (Kiswahili); (c) Hi:nk o g gogs! (Tohono O'odham). Whereas locutions are denned on a particular language, denotation and ref- erence are defined on particular worlds. However, because different speakers are involved in performing the acts, it seems necessary to conclude that the same reference can be made by different Speakers using different locutionary and utterance acts. Obviously, under normal conditions of use, Speaker makes an utterance, uses a locution, and refers with it, all at one and the same moment.
The most significant act in the hierarchy of speaking is the 'illocutionary act.' Austin (1962) awoke people to the fact that S does something in uttering U to H in context C, e.g., states a fact or an opinion, confirms or denies something, makes a prediction, a promise, a request, offers thanks or an invitation, issues an order or an umpire's decision, gives advice or permission, names a child, swears an oath. Thus U is said to have the 'illocutionary force' or 'illocutionary point' of a statement, a confirmation, a denial, a prediction, a promise, a request, and so forth. Many utterances are so-called indirect speech acts, in which case there is more than one illocutionary force present; usually, though, S has only one message to convey in U, and this is its illocutionary point. Etymologically 'illo- cution' is IN+ LOCUTION because the illocution arises from what S does in using the locution. It was said earlier that the purpose of speaking is to cause an effect on the audience: this is called a 'perlocution' or 'perlocutionary effect,' an effect that arises through (= PER) the locution.
The perlocutionary effect of U is the consequence of H recognizing (what s/he takes to be) the locution and illocutionary point of U. When S says (1), S is performing the illocutionary act of making a state- ment about the location of a spider:
There's a spider on your hair.
(1)
Given the widespread fear of spiders, it is likely that by uttering these words S will frighten H; in that case, S has performed the perlocutionary act of frightening H; put another way, the perlocution (perlocutionary effect) of U is that H is frightened. Take another example. The illocutionary point of / bet you a dollar you canjump that puddle would typically be to have H recognize that S is offering a bet; the acceptance or refusal of the challenge is the perlocutionary effect of the utterance. So, a perlocution is a behavioral response to the meaning of U—not necessarily a physical or verbal response, perhaps merely a mental response of some kind. Other perlocutions are such things as: alerting H by warning H of danger; per- suading H to an opinion by stating supporting facts; intimidating H by threatening; and getting H to do something by means of a suggestion, a hint, a request, or a command.
An effect of U which does not result from H recog- nizing the locution and illocutionary point of U is NOT a perlocutionary effect. For instance, in uttering (1) it could be that S frightened H despite the fact that H either did not hear, or did not understand a word of what S said: perhaps H is profoundly deaf and was frightened by S's breath on his face; perhaps H was frightened by an unexpected voice; or perhaps H does not understand English and S frightened him by his facial expression or tone of voice. In these cases, it is not the particular utterance consisting of a particular locution and particular illocution that frightens H, but merely the utterance act.
Because the normal reason for speaking is to cause an effect on the hearer, most of what human beings say is aimed towards the success of perlocutionary acts; consequently, they are extremely significant within a theory of communication. But, strictly speak- ing, perlocutionary acts and perlocutionary effects fall outside of linguistics because they are not part of language per se, but instead responses to the illo- cutions in utterances. What linguists can properly look at, however, are the intentions of speakers to bring about certain perlocutionary effects; these so- called perlocutionary or illocutionary intentions appear in definitions of speech acts in, for example, Bach and Harnish (1977), and Allan (1986).
Bibliography
Allan K 1986 Linguistic Meaning, vol. 2. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Allan K 1998 Natural Language Semantics. Blackwell, Oxford
Speech Act Hierarchy
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