Illocutionary force

The notion of an illocutionary force remains rather unclear in Austin's original account. Some followers of Austin as, e.g., David Holdcroft view illocutionary force as the property of an utterance to be made with a certain intention, namely, the intention to perform this or that illocutionary act -- as contrasted with 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, other scholars as, e.g., Bach and Harnish assume illocutionary force just in case this or that illocutionary act is actually (successfully, that means) performed. According to this conception, you must have heard and understood that I want to bet you in order for my utterance to have 'illocutionary force'.

Some utterances' illocutionary force is not quite obvious: if someone says, " it sure is cold in here", the effect of the statement is contextual. It could be that the person is simply describing the room, in which case the illocutionary force would be the description of the temperature of the room. If it is possible to change the environment, say by turning up the heat or closing a window, the person's intent may be to get someone else to do something about the cold, in which case the illocutionary force would be the other person's action. This latter use is referred to as an Indirect Speech Act as the standard illocutionary force of a question is to extract information but here by implicitly making a command the speaker is deviating from the normal purpose of a question.

This is in contrast to perlocutionary force, which involves the effects that an utterance has upon others in the world.

TASK: what are the necessary conditions to observe the force of an illocutionary act? A perlocutionary act?

Illocutionary force indicators

Illocutionary force indicators, according to the common conception of the notion, show how a given proposition is to be taken, what illocutionary force the utterance is to have, or what illocutionary act the speaker is performing. Examples in English include: word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of the verb, performative verbs, and context. In English, illocutionary force indicators are not always readily identifiable. They are sometimes hidden in the deep structure of the sentence.