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From a former life, I recall that a perlocutionary act is a meaningful speech act designed to have particular effects on people who hear them. For example, telling the story of "the little engine that could" has the perlocutionary force of encouraging a child to try to master some task. Illocutionary acts are meaningful speech acts which function as performative speech acts the utterance of which is an action of a particular kind. For example, the meaningful statement, "All hands on deck" is the illlocutionary speech act of ordering sailors to appear on deck. An observer who replied, " No that's false, no one is on deck." would fail to appreciate the illocutionary (performative) force of the speech act. The utterance "I do" in a marriage ceremony is an illocutionary speech act. I think this is the nature of the distinction.
Bobby
Robert Justin Lipkin Professor of Law Widener University School of Law Delaware |
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