Welcome to Gaia! ::

Topic: Perlocutionary & illocutionary

A listener asked us to speak about two words which, he asserted, are not in the dictionary: perlocutionary and illocutionary. Far be it from us to speak ill of someone who has studied locutionary acts, but we begin by pointing out both words appear in the Unabridged Dictionary; neither is in such widespread usage to have (as yet) earned a place in the smaller Collegiate Dictionary.

Now, as to their meanings. We start with locutionary, which informs both words and which has an ancestor in the Latin verb to speak. The adjective locutionary means "of or relating to the physical act of saying something considered apart from the statement's effect or intention."

The statement's effect or intention is where we get involved with illocutionary and perlocutionary. Illocutionary, created by adding il- (meaning "in; on; within; into; toward") to the locutionary meaning "physical act of saying something," describes an act performed by a speaker in the course of making an utterance. An illocutionary act, might, for example, take the form of a warning (such as there's a snake under your seat!) or a command (as go to your room!).

Then there's perlocutionary, formed by adding per- (meaning "by means of") to locutionary. Perlocutionary refers to an act performed by a speaker on a listener by means of an utterance: the perlocutionary effect of pronouncing a couple husband and wife, for example, is that the two people are married.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

razz

cool