Course paper scientific supervisor: D. Yuldasheva tasdiqlayman

Locutionary Acts: Austin (1962: 108) points out:

We first distinguished a group of things we do in saying something, which together we summed up by saying we perform a locutionary act, which is roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference, which again is roughly equivalent to meaning in the traditional sense.
In a similar vein, Yule (1996: 48) sees that the Locutionary act is a fundamental concept in performative utterances, because the articulation of ‘locutions’ involves the creation of certain words having determine sense and reference. According to Perrault and Allen (1980: 169), “A locutionary act is an act of saying something: it is the act of uttering sequences of words drawn from the vocabulary of a given language”. Overall, the articulation of Locutionary acts will not have powerful effects on the addressees.


He said to me “shoot her!” (Locutionary act)


b) Illocutionary Acts: These are actions that by uttering them we produce certain communicative forces. According to Austin (1962: 99),: “I explained the performance of an act in this new and second sense as the performance of an ‘illocutionary’ act, i.e. performance of an act ‘ in saying something’ as opposed to performance of an act of ‘saying something’.” Austin (ibid.) claims that the Illocutionary act is a matter of performing actions through uttering particular words in specific circumstances. Similarly, Searle and Vanderveken (1985: 109) see that the articulation of illocutions represents the production of word-forces for the minimal unit of human communication. In a similar vein, Alston (1971: 35) believes that the articulation of an illocutionary act requires specific rules and conditions to be hold, such as appropriate persons and contexts. In sum, expressing Illocutions requires the ability to produce powerful utterances having various communicative effects on addresses.


He ordered me to shoot her. (Illocutionary act)