Speech Acts and Emotional Causality in Everyday Life

Abstract

According to J. L. Austin’s (1962) theory of speech acts, a Speaker (S) by means of locutionary and illocutionary acts produces some consequential effects on a Listener’s (L) thoughts, feelings, actions, such as, for instance, conviction, dissuasion, surprise, offence, humiliation, etc.¹ Such effects can be intentional or unintentional.² If S produces them intentionally, i.e., with the intention of producing them, then in this case, and only in this case, he performs a perlocutionary act. The sufficient and necessary conditions for performing a perlocutionary act seem then to be mainly the following three:

• (i) S intends (i.e., he has the intention) to produce an effect X on L (for instance, S wants L to close the door);

• (ii) S says something (i.e., he performs locutionary and illocutionary acts) in order to produce X (“Close the door!”; “Please, close the door!”; “Would you mind to close the door?”, etc.);

• (iii) the effect X, which corresponds to S’s intention, occurs in L (he closes the door).