Final work Card 8 Linguistic Ethnography

Locutions, illocutionary acts, and perlocutions

Jenny Thomas describes the locutionary act as “the actual words uttered “ (2.5.1) . At this level of analysis we are interested in the denotative meaning, not in connotations. Austin subdivides the locutionary act further into three acts:
1. In the ‘phonetic act’ we utter certain noises which are phonological-distinctive
2. In addition, in the ‘ phatic act ’ we utter noises which are part of a vocabulary, which follow the rules of a certain grammar and in which some parts are especially intonated
3. The ‘rhetic act’ claims the existence of a “more or less definite sense and a […] reference” in the uttered words (Austin, p. 93).
To give an example, the ‘ phonetic act ’ in the sentence ‘He learns fast’ would consist of the utterance of phonological-distinctive morphemes. In the ‘phatic act’ though, these noises belong to a certain grammar and follow grammatical rules. This includes in this case the flectional ending {-s} for the third person singular in the simple present and the irregular form of the adverb ‘ fast ’. In the ‘rhetic act’ the sense, namely that he is a fast learner, and reference, which means that the personal pronoun belongs to a certain masculine person, come into play for the first time.
As one can see in the example above, these three acts, which form the locutionary act as a whole, are in most cases uttered simultaneously and cannot be regarded as isolated acts. The subdivision into these three acts though gives us the possibility to outline the function of the use of words when we want to highlight the metalinguistic features of an utterance. In this case, we can isolate the ‘rhetic act’ from the other two; just as the example given by Bublitz (p. 89) proves. According to him, it may occur that speakers who did not understand certain parts of an utterance only perform a ‘phatic act’ but not a ‘ rhetic act ’ when they mimic an utterance. This applies mainly in requests of repeating an utterance.
Apropos repeating sentences, speakers referring to the ‘ phatic act’ of an utterance tend to quote in direct speech because the focus is on form and not on content. Hence, “the phatic act […] is essentially mimicable, reproducible (including intonations, […])” (Austin, p. 96). Speakers referring to the ‘ rhetic act’ in mimicry, however, tend to use the indirect speech (cf. Austin p. 95). To give an example, speakers referring to the ‘ phatic act’ would cite directly: “He said: ‘I'm going to the cinema’", whereas speakers having the sense and reference in their mind would repeat the sentence by “He said he was going to the cinema”.
Moreover, Austin advocates that by performing a ‘ phatic act’, a ‘ phonetic act’ is uttered as well, however this does not apply for the converse since a monkey uttering noises similar to the verb ‘ go ’ is not performing a ‘ phatic act’ (cf. Austin p. 96). Bublitz however criticizes this estimation because it is not even a ‘ phonetic act’, but only a noise which is produced coincidentally by means which are similar to humans’ noises and not belonging to a certain language (cf. p. 88).
‘Locutionary acts’ in general are not the major point of speech act analysis (cf. Botha p. 65). This first dimension fades a bit from the spotlight since the focus tends to be on ‘illocution’, ‘perlocution’ and their relationship.
Speakers do not only utter statements in order to having said them. With the help of the words, they want to promise, warn, criticize, regret, etc. (cf. Austin p. 109). This dimension of speech acts is called ‘ illocution’ and is characterized by the force which is behind the speaker’s words, so it is often paraphrased by ‘ illocutionary force ’. This will be illustrated by reference to the following example:
The sentence ‘He has a gun.’ by ‘ he ’ referring to a man forms the locutionary act. The illocutionary force in this case could be that somebody performs the act of warning a person.
Sometimes, different locutions are uttered in order to perform the illocutionary force. For one, the statement ‘ It’s cold in here’ could be as well as a request as the sentence ‘ Close the window, please ’. There are many factors influencing the way the locution is actually uttered, such as the social distance between speaker and hearer, the urgency of the illocution, the place and so on but the analysis of these factors would go beyond the constraints of this essay.
Conversely, illocutions are variable to the proposition of the locution depending on the context as well (cf. Bublitz p.89). To take up again the example above, ‘It’s cold in here ’ could either be a request or an offer to close the window (cf. Peccei p. 42).
Austin puts this phenomenon of illocutionary force into a formula: “‘In saying x I was doing y’ or ‘I did y’”. To illustrate it, he gives the example: “‘In saying I would shoot him I was threatening him ’” (Austin p.122). Thus, illocutions are often paraphrased as ‘in-doing-acts’, so that Austin draws a precise line to locutions, which he refers to as a “performance of an act of saying something” (Austin pp. 99f.) Bublitz even facilitates the relationship between locution (a) and illocution (b) by the formulas (a) ‘ He said to me p’ and (b) ‘He […]ordered me p’ (Bublitz p. 90).
The remaining question at this stage of analysis is now how a hearer recognizes, which illocutionary force is uttered by a certain locution. Therefore, Austin introduces three circumstances, he calls them ‘ senses’ (p. 115), which should be fulfilled in order to make the audience understand (a) whether there is an illocutionary force behind the words and (b) which force is intended.