Let us now turn to the third aspect of using language, namely, intending to have some effect(s) on the hearer because of what was said and because of the force of the utterance. Austin (Austin, J.L., How to do things with words, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, 119) coined the term Perlocutionary acts ( or effects), arguing that Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons we shall call the performance of an act of this kind the performance of a perlocutionary act or perlocution (perlocutionary acts) are not conventional, although conventional acts may be made use of in order to bring off the perlocutionary act It is characteristic of perlocutionary acts that the response achieved or the sequel can be achieved by additional or entirely by non-locutionary means: thus, intimidation may be achieved by waving a stick or pointing a gun.
Thus the effect of an utterance may be to convince you, surprise you, bore you, annoy you, intimidate you, please you, cause you to find the speaker pompous, or insult you. And the effect ( or effects ) of a particular utterance may or may not have been intended by the speaker. In uttering, Sit right down here, dammit, I may very well intend my utterance to intimidate you. On the other hand, my utterance of How nice of you to invite me may totally surprise and confuse you if you believe you never invited me to the party.
In contrast to illocutionary acts, if a perlocutionary effect is intended, there is no conventional way for the speaker to guarantee that it will be brought about. Indeed, if I say to you that fifteen studies have shown that cigarette-smokers develop lung cancer three times more often than non-smokers, and intend this to convince you that cigarette-smoking is dangerous to your health, I might feel confident that I will convince you. But there is no way to guarantee success in convincing you even if you recognize my purpose in speaking was to do so. Perlocutionary effects come about not as a part of linguistic communication, but because of linguistic communication and how it relates to some more general area of human interaction. Perlocutionary effects are not part of pragmatics.
This means, then, that perlocutionary effects cannot systematically related to illocutionary acts. But it does not mean that intended perlocutionary effects are not standardly associated with given illocutionary acts. We use the term standard here, as earlier, to refer to what is usually anticipated to be the case, but need not be.
There appear to be two types of association. The first involves the association of the intended effect with the particular act itself. Recall that in making an apology the speaker intends to express his regret for some prior act for which he believes he bears some responsibility. Standardly associated with an apology is the intended perlocutionary effect to put right the currently out-of-joint social relationship. Similarly, associated with the act of request in is the intention of the speaker to convince the hearer to actually carry out the request; associated with the act of claiming is the intention to convince the hearer to believe the propositional content of the claim; and associated with the act of promising is the speakers intention to please the hearer as a result of the promise.
The second type of standard association of intended perlocutionary effect is not the type of illocutionary act performed, as above, but rather with the content of the act itself. The best example I know of is the area of insults. Many insults are carried off in the guise of a simple Representation, more specifically, a claim. However, the content of the claim embodies some characteristic that is devalued in that society. This might be done, for example, by literally telling someone, You are the dumbest person Ive ever met, given that the property of lacking intelligence is devalued; or it may be done figuratively, for example, by saying to someone, Your breath is so bad it would knock a buzzard off a manure wagon, and letting the listener figure out just how badly he has been insulted. Relevant to our discussion is the fact that certain intended perlocutionary effects are standardly associated with specific propositional content. |
