Talk:Perlocutionary act

Start of Talk

Hmm. Patent nonsense or no, there should be a talk page here, I think. Several pages around and about this topic have been deleted rather than merely edited; has fascism descended while I slept? Are you going to delete this as well? MaherCoen (talk) 12:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hey, even if you are, at least I got one edit in! -Maher... MaherCoen (talk) 12:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Skrillex

Concerning the final "Skrillex" example. Not only is the mention of Skrillex an embarrassment, is the example not wrong in that it calls a locutionary act an illocutionary one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Godisdead taco (talk • contribs) 19:10, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary

The distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary is really much simpler than this article implies. It writes in seemingly intentionally esoteric and obscure jargon. We should really try to explain this as if we were writing to a general audience, since Wikipedia's audience is, in fact, general. I'll try to come back to this article in a few days when I get on Spring Break, but if anyone else would like to take a run at this and dial down the pretentiousness about 10 notches, I'd applaud them. Amieni (talk) 02:54, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

"It writes in seemingly intentionally esoteric and obscure jargon. We should really try to explain this as if we were writing to a general audience...if anyone else would like to take a run at this and dial down the pretentiousness about 10 notches, I'd applaud them". Hear, hear! I agree with Amieni, who doesn't seem to have made any edits in the last 2+ years since posting that, so my comment is really for whoever stumbles across this talkpage next and knows more about this topic than I do (which isn't a high bar to reach). —PermStrump(talk) 10:39, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

The article is simply WRONG

Perlocutionary effects not only involve effects on psychological states, but also in the physical world. So if I order you to shoot the fact that you shoot is a oerlocutionary effect. Also, perlocutionary effect need not be intended, they can be unintended. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.167.145.219 (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Sharp as a tack

Samples:

illocutionary act, which describes the linguistic function of an utterance

The "linguistic function"? What could this vague phrase possibly mean? It's simply wrong. Look it up somewhere else.

a perlocutionary effect is in some sense external to the performance.

So few words and you've already given up on explaining it.

It may be thought of, in a sense, as the effect of the illocutionary act via the locutionary act.

Too cute.

178.39.122.125 (talk) 03:07, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Help from around the web

From Let’s Get Technical by Bartholomew Martin

Linguists, rhetoricians, and philosophers employ specialized terms when evaluating human speech acts. "Locution" refers to the literal meaning of a speech act. "Illocution" refers to the effect the speaker wants to achieve in making the utterance, while "perlocution" refers to the actual effect of the utterance upon the audience. The latter – the "perlocution" of a speech act, the way it is received by audience – is often affected by what is known as "extra-locutionary" factors.

For example, if a man wants to motivate his son to get up early and work, he might utter the cliché, "you know, son, the early bird gets the worm." The man is not so much concerned about the locution of his utterance – most likely he cares very little about the actual eating habits of birds. Instead, what is significant is his illocution; that is, he intends to provide ample motivation to get his son’s tail out of bed. If the man’s son responds with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders, coupled with a "yeah, maybe," that is the perlocution, the actual effect of the father’s utterance upon his audience. This perlocution could have been influenced by numerous extra-locutionary factors: perhaps the son was particularly tired that day, or maybe he just had enough of his father’s pathetic attempts to motivate him.

Tacky, but effective.

178.39.122.125 (talk)

Another source

This source is less gooey than the previous one.

"The distinction between the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act is important," says Ruth M. Kempson: "the perlocutionary act is the consequent effect on the hearer which the speaker intends should follow from his utterance" (Semantic Theory).

Kempson offers this summary of the three interrelated speech acts originally presented by John L. Austin in How to Do Things With Words (1962): "a speaker utters sentences with a particular meaning (locutionary act), and with a particular force (illocutionary act), in order to achieve a certain effect on the hearer (perlocutionary act)."

I don't quite agree with Kempson's description, unless you put the which-clause in rather thick parentheses. It is not the intended effect, but the effect. The main point is not the intention.

178.39.122.125 (talk) 03:36, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

That cannot be right. We cannot ever know the actual effect, because we were never there to observe it. We only have the written words in front of us, from which we can divine the intended effect. We can read the phrase "Early bird gets the worm" and understand that it's intended effect is to inspire. But this is a hackneyed phrase that's been uttered a million times. We were never present in those million situations, and cannot know what fraction of the time it was a successful motivator. Worse: the father-son example never actually happened; its a work of pure fiction.

It's even skankier than that: We only know that "Early bird gets the worm" was originally intended to be an inspiring phrase, because we were explicitly taught about this phrase and it's intended inspirational meaning in elementary school. Presumably because Ben Franklin jotted it down in Poor Richard's Almanac, or something like that. If you're an English-as-a-second-language person, you might struggle to figure out the intended perlocutionary effect of this phrase.

Look at the Searle–Derrida debate. The Searle-normative meaning of "Early bird gets the worm" is taught in elementary school. Derrida's objection is that we cannot know if it was uttered sincerely or ironically: perhaps the speaker meant to taunt and irritate the listener by saying this phrase, rather than inspire. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 02:41, 28 September 2023 (UTC)