Locution/Illocution/Perlocution

In the eighth lecture of How to Do Things With Words, Austin works out three axes on which every utterance or ‘speech act’ is to be considered.

Firstly, the locutionary: the semantic and referential functions of a speech act, the capacity of the sounds uttered to represent a particular idea or object.

The Illocutionary: which designates the type of act an utterance performs, or attempts to perform, in its utterance. The illocutionary dimension of an act is conventional in this sense as it is institutionally constituted. Austin uses the term ‘illocutionary force’ since it is not a question of what the utterance means or refers to, but of what it is or does. Illocutionary force is achieved when the utterance obeys or corresponds to recognized conventional procedures and other felicity conditions of the speech act.

Thirdly, the Perlocutionary: The perlocutionary aspect of an utterance is to be distinguished from it's illocutionary force as not what the utterance, if successful, successfully performs, but instead encompasses the effects that are achieved on its hearers as a consequence of the utterance itself. If a police officer suddenly ordered me to place my hands on my head, issuing an order of considerable illocutionary force, I might still react in any number of ways other than placing my hands on my head. I might run or charge the officer due to anger or fear; I might submit out of obedience or simply resignation. Such responses are to be considered as the perlocutionary effects of the order or speech act; they are not produced by the conformity of an utterance to a set of structural conditions, therefore frustrating prediction.