Page 489 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

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A speech act is created when speaker S makes an utterance U to hearer H in context C with the reflexive- intention that H should recognize his/her message in the statement, request, promise, apology, command, etc. This entry deals first with the illocutionary effects of clauses within sentence structure, then with the representation of illocutionary force in grammar.
1. Clauses and Illocutionary Force
Suppose a herpetologist utters one of (1-4) to his or her spouse. (1-4) have a common prepositional content: 'H's not ever handling the cobra'; the differ- ence in meaning is indicated by the different moods or clause-types (Sn symbolizes 'speaker of (/j)').
You never handle the cobra
S, makes a statement using the declarative (1)
Do you never handle the cobra?
S2 asks a question using the interrogative (2)
Never handle the cobra!
S3 issues an imperative (3)
(a) Would that you never handle the cobra!
(b) If only you were never to handle the cobra . . .
S4 expresses a wish using the subjunctive (4)
Making a statement, asking a question, issuing an imperative, and expressing a wish are distinct illo- cutionary acts; i.e., S is doing something different in each of (1-4). Because the same proposition is used, the difference must be a function of the different mood
in each case. Hence, mood is the initial clue to deter- mining the illocutionary point of the utterance (i.e., S's message). Thus mood has a role in speech act theory.
Grammarians in the western classical tradition have recognized a degree of coincidence between clause- type and illocutionary force at least since the time of AppolloniusDyscolus(100AD,seeHouseholder 1981: 12f) and probably since 300 BC (see Diogenes Laertius (1925) 'Life of Zeno' VII: 65-68). Lyons (1977) argues against the identification of mood with clause-type because in the western classical tradition both the declarative and the interrogative are indicative in mood. A different view is taken by Palmer (1986) who does distinguish the interrogative within the modality system. However, there issomejustification for Lyon's conclusion because there are not only indicative inter- rogatives like (2) asking about the actual world, but also subjunctiveinterrogatives like (5) which ask ques- tions about hypothetical worlds:
Would you never handle the cobra? (5)
Sadock and Zwicky (1985) surveyed 35 languages representing a wide range of language families and linguistic areas: every one of them distinguishes a declarative to (among other things) make statements, an interrogative to ask things of people, and an imperative to get them to do things. These three moods are orthographically marked by '.,''?,' and '!' respectively. Many languages have clause types with other functions—e.g., optative-subjunctive, expres-
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