AUTHOR: Robin Dugall DATE: 9:09:00 AM ----- BODY:

Ok, so I'm reading this book for the LAST class in my doctoral program and I come across the word, "Illocutionary". I ask myself within a microsecond, "what the h***?" does that mean? Well, feast your eyes on this - an illocutionary force is roughly a speaker's intention behind the production of an illocutionary act, including its communicative point, attitudes involved, and presuppositions. Some utterances' illocutionary force is less 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 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 is in contrast to perlocutionary force, which involves the effects that an utterance has upon others in the world. And people say that I'm dumb!

-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR: wellis68 COMMENT-DATE:10:35 AM COMMENT-BODY:That's funny, I did a post about perlocutionalry language a couple months ago. It's interesting stuff. --------