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Austin (1975:94-107) argues that in terms of the performative utterance, three action structures should be distinguished in speech, namely the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary acts. In other words, when we speak, the performative dimension of language entails three possible acts which relate to the question, “What kinds of acts do we perform in ordinary life?” This means that human language analyses the relationship between the performative language and real life situations in terms of human action.

In a certain sense, the locution is basic to the performative 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 (Austin 1975:108). It is the performative act which produces a coherent and acceptable grammatical form of utterance at the propositional level and it can be divided into the phonetic act, the phatic act, and the rhetic act. Austin (1975:95) distinguishes these acts in the following statements:

The phonetic act is merely the act of uttering certain noises. The phatic act is the uttering of certain vocables or words, i.e. noises of certain types, belonging to and as belonging to, a certain vocabulary, conforming to and as conforming to a certain grammar. The rhetic act is the performance of an act of using those vocables with a certain more-or-less definite sense

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and reference (my emphasis).

The locutionary act is the performance of the act of saying something which presents itself at the level of utterance. This is closely linked to the surface of the utterance in terms of the propositional element or meaning, such as vocabulary and grammar, which demonstrate what has been said or written. The propositional dimensions contain the information to be communicated between a speaker/text and a hearer/reader.

The illocutionary act, on the other hand, is the performance of an act in saying something as opposed to the performance of an act of saying something (Austin 1975:99). It is the performative act of producing an utterance with a particular (conventional) illocutionary force (Austin 1975:100). This only takes place within a conventional rule such as a given community because the illocutionary act serves as institutional force (procedure) influencing what we do in saying something. The intent of the speaker in the language act is communicated in the form of an intentional act in accordance with the speaker’s specific intent to promise, warn, and exhort the hearer to act in a certain way through language.

Lastly, the perlocutionary act92 is “what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading” (Austin 1975:109). It is the performative act by which the speaker accomplishes a particular intended

effect in the hearer. Stated differently, “saying something will often, or even normally, produce

certain consequential effects upon feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons,” and an act of speech which is performed in this way is termed a perlocutionary act (Austin 1975:101). It responds to the speaker’s utterance according to the illocutionary act as the obtained effect of what has been said on the hearer. Austin (1975:101)

92 _{Austin (1975:101) explains that in the perlocutionary act, “Saying something will often, or even normally,}

produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them; and we may then say, thinking of this, that the speaker has performed an act in the nomenclature of which… to the performance of the locutionary or illocutionary act. We shall call the performance of an act of this kind the performance of a

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further demonstrates the differences between these three linguistic forces as follows:

Act (A) or Locution

He said to me ‘Shoot her!’ meaning by ‘shoot’, shoot and referring by ‘her’ to her.

Act (B) or Illocution

He urged (or advised, ordered, &c.) me to shoot her.

Act (C.a) or Perlocution He persuaded me to shoot her.

Act (C.b)

He got me to (or made me &c.) shoot her.

As mentioned earlier, the locutionary act only refers to propositional elements with propositional meaning in a grammar or sentence while the illocutionary act93 is the force of the speaker’s utterance to do something to the hearer or cause a particular effect. That is to say, the illocutionary force creates the perlocutionary act through the hearer’s response to the speaker’s utterance which for example has the effect of persuading the hearer (B,C). Precisely, the locution act has to do with a sign system, words themselves (langue), the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act have to do with sentences, with language in action (parole).94 The

93 _{Austin (1975:150-151) identifies five kinds of illocutionary actions namely verdictives, exercitives,}

commissives, behabitives and expositives: (1) The verdictives have to do with the issuing of a verdict (e.g., to estimate, reckon and appraise); (2) The exercitives relate to the exercise of powers, rights and influence (e.g., to appoint, vote, order, urge, advise, and warn); (3) The commissives entail promises that you commit to do something; (4) The behabitives have to do with attitudes and social behaviour (e.g., apologizing, congratulating, commending, condoling, cursing and challenging); and (5) The expositives explain how we use words (e.g., “I reply,” “I argue,” “I concede,” and “I postulate.”).

94 _{The idea of langue and parole was propounded by Ferdinand de Saussure (1916). His ideas that “Language is}

divided into langue and parole, roughly, grammar and speech that every morpheme has two parts, its meaning/grammatical function and its form, and that the relation between the meaning of a word and its form are arbitrary” (Krämer 2012:12). For Saussure, parole signified everyday language as the individual speech act, and

langue linked to the linguistic system as a structure within which individual speech acts to use language. Ricoeur

(1974:70-71) accepted the views of Saussure in order to interpret the text. For Ricoeur “The conventions presupposed in the use of language at a given point (langue) are privileged above the speech-acts of individual

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issue is about what one is doing when saying something and what effect the act of saying something has on the hearer. In other words, implied also in the relationship between the meaning of what one says and the force of what one says (cf. Austin 1975:108) is the idea that the speaker is a doer as an agent because the speaker supplies the force in saying something which relates the speaker’s role to the hearer in order to attain his/her intention. For example, in the context of a specific promise between the speaker and the hearer, before describing it, we should distinguish logically a promise from a threat or coercion in communication:

A promise is a pledge to do something for you, not to you; but a threat is a pledge to do something to you, not for you. A promise is defective if the thing promised is something the promisee does not want done… Furthermore, a promise, unlike an invitation, normally requires some sort of occasion or situation that calls for the promise. A crucial feature of such occasions or situations seems to be that the promise wishes that something be done, and the promisor is aware of this wish (Searle 1969:58, my emphasis).

This form of promising requires an attitude of commitment on the part of the speaker which indicates that, “it is the undertaking of an obligation to perform a certain act” (Searle 1969:60).