Intention and Convention in Speech Acts

Author(s): P. F. Strawson
Source: The Philosophical Review , Oct., 1964, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Oct., 1964), pp. 439-460
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2183301

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INTENTION AND CONVENTION IN
SPEECH ACTS

IN THIS PAPER I want to discuss some questions regarding

J. L. Austin's notions of the illocutionary force of an utterance
and of the illocutionary act which a speaker performs in making
an utterance.'
There are two preliminary matters I must mention, if only to
get them out of the way. Austin contrasts what he calls the
"normal" or "serious" use of speech with what he calls "etio-
lated" or "parasitical" uses. His doctrine of illocutionary force
relates essentially to the normal or serious use of speech and not,
or not directly, to etiolated or parasitical uses; and so it will be
with my comments on his doctrine. I am not suggesting that the
distinction between the normal or serious use of speech and the
secondary uses which he calls etiolated or parasitical is so clear
as to call for no further examination; but I shall take it that
there is such a distinction to be drawn and I shall not here further
examine it.
My second preliminary remark concerns another distinction,
or pair of distinctions, which Austin draws. Austin distinguish-
es the illocutionary force of an utterance from what he calls its
"meaning" and distinguishes between the illocutionary and the
locutionary acts performed in issuing the utterance. Doubts may
be felt about the second term of each of these distinctions. It may
be felt that Austin has not made clear just what abstractions from
the total speech act he intends to make by means of his notions of
meaning and of locutionary act. Although this is a question on
which I have views, it is not what the present paper is about.
Whatever doubts may be entertained about Austin's notions of
meaning and of locutionary act, it is enough for present purposes
to be able to say, as I think we clearly can, the following about
their relation to the notion of illocutionary force. The meaning

1 All references, unless otherwise indicated, are to How To Do Things w

Words (Oxford, i962).

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P. F. STRA WSON

of a (serious) utterance, as conceived by Austin, always embodies

some limitation on its possible force, and sometimes-as, for ex-
ample, in some cases where an explicit performative formula,
like "I apologize," is used-the meaning of an utterance may
exhaust its force; that is, there may be no more to the force than
there is to the meaning; but very often the meaning, though it
limits, does not exhaust, the force. Similarly, there may some-
times be no more to say about the illocutionary force of an
utterance than we already know if we know what locutionary
act has been performed; but very often there is more to know
about the illocutionary force of an utterance than we know in
knowing what locutionary act has been performed.
So much for these two preliminaries. Now I shall proceed to
assemble from the text some indications as to what Austin means
by the force of an utterance and as to what he means by an
illocutionary act. These two notions are not so closely related that
to know the force of an utterance is the same thing as to know
what illocutionary act was actually performed in issuing it. For
if an utterance with the illocutionary force of, say, a warning is
not understood in this way (that is, as a warning) by the audience
to which it is addressed, then (it is held) the illocutionary act of
warning cannot be said to have been actually performed. "The
performance of an illocutionary act involves the securing of up-
take"; that is, it involves "bringing about the understanding of
the meaning and of the force of the locution" (pp. I I5-Ii6).
Perhaps we may express the relation by saying that to know the
force of an utterance is the same thing as to know what illocution-
ary act, if any, was actually performed in issuing it. Austin gives
many examples and lists of words which help us to form at least
a fair intuitive notion of what is meant by "illocutionary force"
and "illocutionary act." Besides these, he gives us certain general
clues to these ideas, which may be grouped, as follows, under
four heads:
i. Given that we know (in Austin's sense) the meaning of an
utterance, there may still be a further question as to how what was
said was meant by the speaker, or as to how the words spoken were

2 I refer later to the need for qualification of this doctrine.

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SPEECH ACTS

used, or as to how the utterance was to be taken or ought to h

taken (pp. 98-99). In order to know the illocutionary force of the
utterance, we must know the answer to this further question.
2. A locutionary act is an act of saying something; an illo-
cutionary act is an act we perform in saying something. It is
what we do, in saying what we say. Austin does not regard this
characterization as by any means a satisfactory test for identifying
kinds of illocutionary acts since, so regarded, it would admit many
kinds of acts which he wishes to exclude from the class (p. 99 and
Lecture X).
3. It is a sufficient, though not, I think, a necessary, condition
of a verb's being the name of a kind of illocutionary act that it
can figure, in the first person present indicative, as what Austin
calls an explicit performative. (This latter notion I shall assume
to be familiar and perspicuous.)
4. The illocutionary act is "a conventional act; an act done as
conforming to a convention" (p. I05). As such, it is to be sharply
contrasted with the producing of certain effects, intended or
otherwise, by means of an utterance. This producing of effects,
though it too can often be ascribed as an act to the speaker (his
perlocutionary act), is in no way a conventional act (pp. I20-I2I).
Austin reverts many times to the "conventional" nature of the
illocutionary act (pp. I03, I05, i8, I I5, I20, I2I, I27) and
speaks also of "conventions of illocutionary force" (p. I I4).
Indeed, he remarks (pp. 120-I2I) that though acts which can
properly be called by the same names as illocutionary acts-
for example, acts of warning-can be brought off nonverbally,
without the use of words, yet, in order to be properly called by
these names, such acts must be conventional nonverbal acts.

II

I shall assume that we are clear enough about the intended

application of Austin's notions of illocutionary force and illo-
cutionary act to be able to criticize, by reference to cases, his
general doctrines regarding those notions. It is the general
doctrine I listed last above-the doctrine that an utterance's
having such and such a force is a matter of convention-that I

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P.F. STRAWSON

shall take as the starting point of inquiry. Usually this doctrine

is affirmed in a quite unqualified way. But just once there occurs
an interestingly qualified statement of it. Austin says, of the use
of language with a certain illocutionary force, that "it may ... be
said to be conventional in the sense that at least it could be made
explicit by the performative formula" (p. 103). The remark has
a certain authority in that it is the first explicit statement of the
conventional nature of the illocutionary act. I shall refer to it later.
Meanwhile let us consider the doctrine in its unqualified form.
Why does Austin say that the illocutionary act is a conventional
act, an act done as conforming to a convention? I must first
mention, and neutralize, two possible sources of confusion. (It
may seem an excess of precaution to do so. I apologize to those
who find it so.) First, we may agree (or not dispute) that any
speech act is, as such, at least in part a conventional act. The
performance of any speech act involves at least the observance or
exploitation of some linguistic conventions, and every illocutionary
act is a speech act. But it is absolutely clear that this is not the
point that Austin is making in declaring the illocutionary act to
be a conventional act. We must refer, Austin would say, to lin-
guistic conventions to determine what locutionary act has been
performed in the making of an utterance, to determine what the
meaning of the utterance is. The doctrine now before us is the
further doctrine that where force is not exhausted by meaning,
the fact that an utterance has the further unexhausted force it
has is also a matter of convention; or, where it is exhausted by
meaning, the fact that it is, is a matter of convention. It is not
just as being a speech act that an illocutionary act-for example,
of warning-is conventional. A nonverbal act of warning is,
Austin maintains, conventionally such in just the same way as an
illocutionary-that is, verbal-act of warning is conventionally
such.
Second, we must dismiss as irrelevant the fact that it can proper
be said to be a matter of convention that an act of, for example,
warning is correctly called by this name. For if this were held to
be a ground for saying that illocutionary acts were conventional
acts, then any describable act whatever would, as correctly
described, be a conventional act.

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SPEECH ACTS

The contention that illocutionary force is a matter of con-

vention is easily seen to be correct in a great number of cases.
For very many kinds of human transaction involving speech are
governed and in part constituted by what we easily recognize as
established conventions of procedure additional to the con-
ventions governing the meanings of our utterances. Thus the fact
that the word "guilty" is pronounced by the foreman of the
jury in court at the proper moment constitutes his utterance as
the act of bringing in a verdict; and that this is so is certainly a
matter of the conventional procedures of the law. Similarly, it
is a matter of convention that if the appropriate umpire pro-
nounces a batsman "out," he thereby performs the act of giving
the man out, which no player or spectator shouting "Out!" can
do. Austin gives other examples, and there are doubtless many
more which could be given, where there clearly exist statable
conventions, relating to the circumstances of utterance, such
that an utterance with a certain meaning, pronounced by the
appropriate person in the appropriate circumstances, has the
force it has as conforming to those conventions. Examples of
illocutionary acts of which this is true can be found not only in
the sphere of social institutions which have a legal point (like the
marriage ceremony and the law courts themselves) or of activities
governed by a definite set of rules (like cricket and games
generally) but in many other relations of human life. The act of
introducing, performed by uttering the words "This is Mr. Smith,"
may be said to be an act performed as conforming to a convention.
The act of surrendering, performed by saying "Kamerad!" and
throwing up your arms when confronted with a bayonet, may be
said to be (to have become) an act performed as conforming to
an accepted convention, a conventional act.
But it seems equally clear that, although the circumstances of
utterance are always relevant to the determination of the illo-
cutionary force of an utterance, there are many cases in which it
is not as conforming to an accepted convention of any kind (other
than those linguistic conventions which help to fix the meaning
of the utterance) that an illocutionary act is performed. It seems
clear, that is, that there are many cases in which the illocutionary
force of an utterance, though not exhausted by its meaning, is

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not owed to any conventions other than those which help to give
it its meaning. Surely there may be cases in which to utter the
words "The ice over there is very thin" to a skater is to issue a
warning (is to say something with the force of a warning) without
its being the case that there is any statable convention at all
(other than those which bear on the nature of the locutionary act)
such that the speaker's act can be said to be an act done as con-
forming to that convention.
Here is another example. We can readily imagine circum-
stances in which an utterance of the words "Don't go" would be
correctly described not as a request or an order, but as an en-
treaty. I do not want to deny that there may be conventional
postures or procedures for entreating: one can, for example,
kneel down, raise one's arms and say, "I entreat you." But I do
want to deny that an act of entreaty can be performed only as
conforming to some such conventions. What makes X's words to
r an entreaty not to go is something-complex enough, no doubt-
relating to X's situation, attitude to r, manner, and current
intention. There are questions here which we must discuss later.
But to suppose that there is always and necessarily a convention
conformed to would be like supposing that there could be no
love affairs which did not proceed on lines laid down in the
Roman de la Rose or that every dispute between men must follow
the pattern specified in Touchstone's speech about the counter-
check quarrelsome and the lie direct.
Another example. In the course of a philosophical discussion
(or, for that matter, a debate on policy) one speaker raises an
objection to what the previous speaker has just said. X says (or
proposes) that p and r objects that q. r's utterance has the force
of an objection to X's assertion (or proposal) that p. But where
is the convention that constitutes it an objection ? That r's utter
has the force of an objection may lie partly in the character of the
dispute and of X's contention (or proposal) and it certainly lies
partly, in r's view of these things, in the bearing which he takes
the proposition that q to have on the doctrine (or proposal) that
p. But although there may be, there does not have to be, any
convention involved other than those linguistic conventions
which help to fix the meanings of the utterances.

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I do not think it necessary to give further examples. It seems

perfectly clear that, if at least we take the expressions "con-
vention" and "conventional" in the most natural way, the
doctrine of the conventional nature of the illocutionary act does
not hold generally. Some illocutionary acts are conventional;
others are not (except in so far as they are locutionary acts).
Why then does Austin repeatedly affirm the contrary? It is
unlikely that he has made the simple mistake of generalizing from
some cases to all. It is much more likely that he is moved by
some further, and fundamental, feature of illocutionary acts,
which it must be our business to discover. Even though we may
decide that the description "conventional" is not appropriately
used, we may presume it worth our while to look for the reason
for using it. Here we may recall that oddly qualified remark that
the performance of an illocutionary act, or the use of a sentence
with a certain illocutionary force, "may be said to be conventional
in the sense that at least it could be made explicit by the performa-
tive formula" (p. 103). On this we may first, and with justice,
be inclined to comment that there is no such sense of "being
conventional," that if this is a sense of anything to the purpose,
it is a sense of "being capable of being conventional." But although
this is a proper comment on the remark, we should not simply
dismiss the remark with this comment. Whatever it is that leads
Austin to call illocutionary acts in general "conventional" must
be closely connected with whatever it is about such acts as warn-
ing, entreating, apologizing, advising, that accounts for the fact
that they at least could be made explicit by the use of the corre-
sponding first-person performative form. So we must ask what it
is about them that accounts for this fact. Obviously it will not do
to answer simply that they are acts which can be performed by
the use of words. So are many (perlocutionary) acts, like convinc-
ing, dissuading, alarming, and amusing, for which, as Austin
points out, there is no corresponding first-person performative
formula. So we need some further explanation.

III

I think a concept we may find helpful at this point is one

introduced by H. P. Grice in his valuable article on Meaning

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(Philosophical Review, LXVII, I 957), namely, the concept of someone's

nonnaturally meaning something by an utterance. The concept does not
apply only to speech acts-that is, to cases where that by which
someone nonnaturally means something is a linguistic utterance.
It is of more general application. But it will be convenient to refer
to that by which someone, S, nonnaturally means something as S's
utterance. The explanation of the introduced concept is given in
terms of the concept of intention. S nonnaturally means some-
thing by an utterance x if S intends (i1) to produce by uttering x
a certain response (r) in an audience A and intends (i2) that A
shall recognize S's intention (i1) and intends (i3) that this rec-
ognition on the part of A of S's intention (i1) shall function as
A's reason, or a part of his reason, for his response r. (The word
"response," though more convenient in some ways than Grice's
"effect," is not ideal. It is intended to cover cognitive and affective
states or attitudes as well as actions.) It is, evidently, an important
feature of this definition that the securing of the response r is
intended to be mediated by the securing of another (and always
cognitive) effect in A; namely, recognition of S's intention to
secure response r.
Grice's analysis of his concept is fairly complex. But I think a
little reflection shows that it is not quite complex enough for his
purpose. Grice's analysis is undoubtedly offered as an analysis
of a situation in which one person is trying, in a sense of the
word "communicate" fundamental to any theory of meaning,
to communicate with another. But it is possible to imagine a
situation in which Grice's three conditions would be satisfied by
a person S and yet, in this important sense of "communicate,"
it would not be the case that S could be said to be trying to com-
municate by means of his production of x with the person A in
whom he was trying to produce the response r. I proceed to
describe such a situation.
S intends by a certain action to induce in A the belief that p;
so he satisfies condition (i1). He arranges convincing-looking
"evidence" that p, in a place where A is bound to see it. He does
this, knowing that A is watching him at work, but knowing also
that A does not know that S knows that A is watching him at work. He
realizes that A will not take the arranged "evidence" as genuine

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or natural evidence that p, but realizes, and indeed intends, that

A will take his arranging of it as grounds for thinking that he,
S, intends to induce in A the belief that p. That is, he intends
to recognize his (i1) intention. So S satisfies condition (i2). He
knows that A has general grounds for thinking that S would not
wish to make him, A, think that p unless it were known to S to
be the case that p; and hence that A's recognition of his (S's)
intention to induce in A the belief that p will in fact seem to A a
sufficient reason for believing that p. And he intends that A's
recognition of his intention (i1) should function in just this way.
So he satisfies condition (i3).
S, then, satisfies all Grice's conditions. But this is clearly not a
case of attempted communication in the sense which (I think it is
fair to assume) Grice is seeking to elucidate. A will indeed take S
to be trying to bring it about that A is aware of some fact; but he
will not take S as trying, in the colloquial sense, to "let him know"
something (or to "tell" him something). But unless S at least
brings it about that A takes him (S) to be trying to let him (A)
know something, he has not succeeded in communicating with
A; and if, as in our example, he has not even tried to bring this
about, then he has not even tried to communicate with A. It
seems a minimum further condition of his trying to do this that
he should not only intend A to recognize his intention to get
A to think that p, but that he should also intend A to recognize
his intention to get A to recognize his intention to get A to think
that p.
We might approximate more closely to the communication
situation if we changed the example by supposing it not only
clear to both A and S that A was watching S at work, but also clear
to them both that it was clear to them both. I shall content myself,
however, with drawing from the actually considered example
the conclusion that we must add to Grice's conditions the further
condition that S should have the further intention (i4) that A
should recognize his intention (i2). It is possible that further
argument could be produced to show that even adding this
condition is not sufficient to constitute the case as one of attempted
communication. But I shall rest content for the moment with the
fact that this addition at least is necessary.

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P. F. STRAWSON

Now we might have expected in Grice's paper an account of

what it is for A to understand something by an utterance x, an ac-
count complementary to the account of what it is for S to mean
something by an utterance x. Grice in fact gives no such account,
and I shall suggest a way of at least partially supplying this lack.
I say "at least partially" because the uncertainty as to the suffi-
ciency of even the modified conditions for S's nonnaturally
meaning something by an utterance x is reflected in a correspond-
ing uncertainty in the sufficiency of conditions for A's understand-
ing. But again we may be content for the moment with necessary
conditions. I suggest, then, that for A (in the appropriate sense of
"understand") to understand something by utterance x, it is
necessary (and perhaps sufficient) that there should be some
complex intention of the (i2) form, described above, which A
takes S to have, and that for A to understand the utterance
correctly, it is necessary that A should take S to have the complex
intention of the (i2) form which S does have. In other words, if
A is to understand the utterance correctly, S's (i4) intention and
hence his (i2) intention must be fulfilled. Of course it does not
follow from the fulfillment of these intentions that his (i1) inten-
tion is fulfilled; nor, consequently, that his (i3) intention is ful-
filled.
It is at this point, it seems, that we may hope to find a possible
point of connection with Austin's terminology of "securing
uptake." If we do find such a point of connection, we also find a
possible starting point for an at least partial analysis of the notions
of illocutionary force and of the illocutionary act. For to secure
uptake is to secure understanding of (meaning and) illocutionary
force; and securing understanding of illocutionary force is said
by Austin to be an essential element in bringing off the illocu-
tionary act. It is true that this doctrine of Austin's may be ob-
jected to.3 For surely a man may, for example, actually have
made such and such a bequest, or gift, even if no one ever reads
his will or instrument of gift. We may be tempted to say instead
that at least the aim, if not the achievement, of securing uptake is an
essential element in the performance of the illocutionary act.

3 I owe the objections which follow to Professor Hart.

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To this, too, there is an objection. Might not a man really have

made a gift, in due form, and take some satisfaction in the thought,
even if he had no expectations of the fact ever being known?
But this objection at most forces on us an amendment to which
we are in any case obliged4: namely, that the aim, if not the
achievement, of securing uptake is essentially a standard, if not an
invariable, element in the performance of the illocutionary act. So
the analysis of the aim of securing uptake remains an essential
element in the analysis of the notion of the illocutionary act.

IV

Let us, then, make a tentative identification-to be subse-

quently qualified and revised-of Austin's notion of uptake with
that at least partially analyzed notion of understanding (on the
part of an audience) which I introduced just now as complemen-
tary to Grice's concept of somebody nonnaturally meaning
something by an utterance. Since the notion of audience under-
standing is introduced by way of a fuller (though partial) analysis
than any which Austin gives of the notion of uptake, the identi-
fication is equivalent to a tentative (and partial) analysis of the
notion of uptake and hence of the notions of illocutionary act
and illocutionary force. If the identification were correct, then it
would follow that to say something with a certain illocutionary
force is at least (in the standard case) to have a certain complex
intention of the (i4) form described in setting out and modifying
Grice's doctrine.
Next we test the adequacy and explanatory power of this
partial analysis by seeing how far it helps to explain other features
of Austin's doctrine regarding illocutionary acts. There are two
points at which we shall apply this test. One is the point at which
Austin maintains that the production of an utterance with a
certain illocutionary force is a conventional act in that un-
conventional sense of "conventional" which he glosses in terms
of general suitability for being made explicit with the help of an

4 For an illocutionary act may be performed altogether unintentionally. See

the example about redoubling at bridge, p. 457 below.

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explicitly performative formula. The other is the point at which

Austin considers the possibility of a general characterization of
the illocutionary act as what we do, in saying what we say. He
remarks on the unsatisfactoriness of this characterization in that
it would admit as illocutionary acts what are not such; and we
may see whether the suggested analysis helps to explain the ex-
clusion from the class of illocutionary acts of those acts falling un-
der this characterization which Austin wishes to exclude. These
points are closely connected with each other.
First, then, we take the point about the general suitability of
an illocutionary act for performance with the help of the explicitly
performative formula for that act. The explanation of this
feature of illocutionary acts has two phases; it consists of, first, a
general, and then a special, point about intention. The first
point may be roughly expressed by saying that in general a man
can speak of his intention in performing an action with a kind of
authority which he cannot command in predicting its outcome.
What he intends in doing something is up to him in a way in
which the results of his doing it are not, or not only, up to him.
But we are concerned not with just any intention to produce any
kind of effect by acting, but with a very special kind of case.
We are concerned with the case in which there is not simply an
intention to produce a certain response in an audience, but an
intention to produce that response by means of recognition on the
part of the audience of the intention to produce that response,
this recognition to serve as part of the reason that the audience
has for its response, and the intention that this recognition should
occur being itself intended to be recognized. The speaker, then,
not only has the general authority on the subject of his intention
that any agent has; he also has a motive, inseparable from the
nature of his act, for making that intention clear. For he will
not have secured understanding of the illocutionary force of
his utterance, he will not have performed the act of communi-
cation he sets out to perform, unless his complex intention is
grasped. Now clearly, for the enterprise to be possible at all, there
must exist, or he must find, means of making the intention clear.
If there exists any conventional linguistic means of doing so, the
speaker has both a right to use, and a motive for using, those

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means. One such means, available sometimes, which comes

very close to the employment of the explicit performative form,
would be to attach, or subjoin, to the substance of the message
what looks like a force-elucidating comment on it, which may or
may not have the form of a self-ascription. Thus we have phrases
like "This is only a suggestion" or "I'm only making a sugges-
tion"; or again "That was a warning " or "I'm warning you."
For using such phrases, I repeat, the speaker has the authority
that anyone has to speak on the subject of his intentions and
the motive that I have tried to show is inseparable from an act of
communication.
From such phrases as these-which have, in appearance, the
character of comments on utterances other than themselves-
to the explicit performative formula the step is only a short one.
My reason for qualifying the remark that such phrases have the
character of comments on utterances other than themselves is
this. We are considering the case in which the subjoined quasi-
comment is addressed to the same audience as the utterance
on which it is a quasi-comment. Since it is part of the speaker's
audience-directed intention to make clear the character of his
utterance as, for example, a warning, and since the subjoined
quasi-comment directly subserves this intention, it is better to
view the case, appearances notwithstanding, not as a case in which
we have two utterances, one commenting on the other, but as a
case of a single unitary speech act. Crudely, the addition of the
quasi-comment "That was a warning" is part of the total act of
warning. The effect of the short step to the explicitly perform-
ative formula is simply to bring appearances into line with reality.
When that short step is taken, we no longer have, even in
appearance, two utterances, one a comment on the other, but a
single utterance in which the first-person performative verb mani-
festly has that peculiar logical character of which Austin rightly
made so much, and which we may express in the present context
by saying that the verb serves not exactly to ascribe an intention
to the speaker but rather, in Austin's phrase, to make explicit the
type of communication intention with which the speaker speaks,
the type of force which the utterance has.
The above might be said to be a deduction of the general pos-

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P. F. STRAWSON

sibility and utility of the explicitly performative formula for the

cases of illocutionary acts not essentially conventional. It may be
objected that the deduction fails to show that the intentions
rendered explicit by the use of performative formulae in general
must be of just the complex form described, and hence fails to
justify the claim that just this kind of intention lies at the core
of all illocutionary acts. And indeed we shall see that this claim
would be mistaken. But before discussing why, we shall make a
further application of the analysis at the second testing point
I mentioned. That is, we shall see what power it has to explain
why some of the things we may be doing, in saying what we say,
are not illocutionary acts and could not be rendered explicit by
the use of the performative formula.
Among the things mentioned by Austin which we might be
doing in saying things, but which are not illocutionary acts, I
shall consider the two examples of (i) showing off and (2)
insinuating. Now when we show off, we are certainly trying
to produce an effect on the audience: we talk, indeed, for
effect; we try to impress, to evoke the response of admiration.
But it is no part of the intention to secure the effect by means of
the recognition of the intention to secure it. It is no part of our
total intention to secure recognition of the intention to produce
the effect at all. On the contrary: recognition of the intention
might militate against securing the effect and promote an op-
posite effect, for example, disgust.
This leads on to a further general point not explicitly con-
sidered by Austin, but satisfactorily explained by the analysis
under consideration. In saying to an audience what we do say,
we very often intend not only to produce the primary response
r by means of audience recognition of the intention to produce
that response, but to produce further effects by means of the
production of the primary response r. Thus my further purpose
in informing you that p (that is, aiming to produce in you the
primary cognitive response of knowledge or belief that p) may be
to bring it about thereby that you adopt a certain line of conduct
or a certain attitude. In saying what I say, then, part of what
I am doing is trying to influence your attitudes or conduct in a
certain way. Does this part of what I am doing in saying what I

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SPEECH ACTS

say contribute to determining the character of the illocutionary

act I perform? And if not, why not? If we take the first question
strictly as introduced and posed, the answer to it is "No." The
reason for the answer follows from the analysis. We have no com-
plex intention (i4) that there should be recognition of an inten-
tion (i2) that there should be recognition of an intention (i1)
that the further effect should be produced; for it is no part of our
intention that the further effect should be produced by way of
recognition of our intention that it should be; the production
in the audience of belief that p is intended to be itself the means
whereby his attitude or conduct is to be influenced. We secure
uptake, perform the act of communication that we set out to
perform, if the audience understands us as informing him that
Although it is true that, in saying what we say, we are in fact
trying to produce the further effect-this is part of what we are
doing, whether we succeed in producing the effect or not-yet
this does not enter into the characterization of the illocutionary
act. With this case we have to contrast the case in which, instead
of aiming at a primary response and a further effect, the latter to
be secured through the former alone, we aim at a complex
primary response. Thus in the case where I do not simply inform,
but warn, you that p, among the intentions I intend you to recog-
nize (and intend you to recognize as intended to be recognized)
are not only the intention to secure your belief that p, but the
intention to secure that you are on your guard against p-perils.
The difference (one of the differences) between showing off and
warning is that your recognition of my intention to put you on
your guard may well contribute to putting you on your guard,
whereas your recognition of my intention to impress you is not
likely to contribute to my impressing you (or not in the way I
intended) .5
Insinuating fails, for a different reason, to be a type of illocu-

5 Perhaps trying to impress might sometimes have an illocutionary character.

For I might try to impress you with my effrontery, intending you to recognize
this intention and intending your recognition of it to function as part of your
reason for being impressed, and so forth. But then I am not merely trying to
impress you; I am inviting you to be impressed. I owe this point to Mr. B. F.
McGuinness.

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P. F. STRA WSON

tionary act. An essential feature of the intentions which make up

the illocutionary complex is their overtness. They have, one might
say, essential avowability. This is, in one respect, a logically
embarrassing feature. We have noticed already how we had
to meet the threat of a counterexample to Grice's analysis of the
communicative act in terms of three types of intention-(il), (42),
and (i3)-by the addition of a further intention (i4) that an
intention (42) should be recognized. We have no proof, how
that the resulting enlarged set of conditions is a complete analysis.
Ingenuity might show it was not; and the way seems open to a
regressive series of intentions that intentions should be recognized.
While I do not think there is anything necessarily objectionable in
this, it does suggest that the complete and rounded-off set of
conditions aimed at in a conventional analysis is not easily and
certainly attainable in these terms. That is why I speak of the
feature in question as logically embarrassing. At the same time
it enables us easily to dispose of insinuating as a candidate for the
status of a type of illocutionary act. The whole point of insin-
uating is that the audience is to suspect, but not more than suspect,
the intention, for example, to induce or disclose a certain belief.
The intention one has in insinuating is essentially nonavowable.
Now let us take stock a little. We tentatively laid it down as
a necessary condition of securing understanding of the illocution-
ary force of an utterance that the speaker should succeed in
bringing it about that the audience took him, in issuing his
utterance, to have a complex intention of a certain kind, namely
the intention that the audience should recognize (and recognize
as intended to be recognized) his intention to induce a certain
response in the audience. The suggestion has, as we have just
seen, certain explanatory merits. Nevertheless we cannot claim
general application for it as even a partial analysis of the notions
of illocutionary force and illocutionary act. Let us look at some
reasons why not.

I remarked earlier that the words "Don't go" may have the
force, inter alia, either of a request or of an entreaty. In either

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case the primary intention of the utterance (if we presume the

words to be uttered with the sense "Don't go away") is that of
inducing the person addressed to stay where he is. His staying
where he is is the primary response aimed at. But the only other
intentions mentioned in our scheme of partial analysis relate
directly or indirectly to recognition of the primary intention. So
how, in terms of that scheme, are we to account for the variation
in illocutionary force between requests and entreaties?
This question does not appear to raise a major difficulty for
the scheme. The scheme, it seems, merely requires supplementing
and enriching. Entreaty, for example, is a matter of trying to secure
the primary response not merely through audience recognition of
the intention to secure it, but through audience recognition of a
complex attitude of which this primary intention forms an in-
tegral part. A wish that someone should stay may be held in
different ways: passionately or lightly, confidently or desperately;
and it may, for different reasons, be part of a speaker's intention
to secure recognition of how he holds it. The most obvious reason,
in the case of entreaty, is the belief, or hope, that such a revelation
is more likely to secure the fulfillment of the primary intention.
But one may not only request and entreat; one may order
someone to stay where he is. The words "Don't go" may have the
illocutionary force of an order. Can we so simply accommodate
in our scheme this variation in illocutionary force? Well, we can
accommodate it; though not so simply. We can say that a man
who issues an order typically intends his utterance to secure a
certain response, that he intends this intention to be recognized,
and its recognition to be a reason for the response, that he intends
the utterance to be recognized as issued in a certain social con-
text such that certain social rules or conventions apply to the
issuing of utterances in this context and such that certain conse-
quences may follow in the event of the primary response not
being secured, that he intends this intention too to be recognized,
and finally that he intends the recognition of these last features
to function as an element in the reasons for the response on the
part of the audience.
Evidently, in this case, unlike the case of entreaty, the scheme
has to be extended to make room for explicit reference to social

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P. F. STRA WSON

convention. It can, with some strain, be so extended. But as we

move further into the region of institutionalized procedures, the
strain becomes too much for the scheme to bear. On the one hand,
one of its basic features-namely, the reference to an intention
to secure a definite response in an audience (over and above
the securing of uptake)-has to be dropped. On the other, the
reference to social conventions of procedure assumes a very
much greater importance. Consider an umpire giving a batsman
out, a jury bringing in a verdict of guilty, a judge pronouncing
sentence, a player redoubling at bridge, a priest or a civil officer
pronouncing a couple man and wife. Can we say that the umpire's
primary intention is to secure a certain response (say, retiring
to the pavilion) from a certain audience (say, the batsman), the
jurymen's to secure a certain response (say, the pronouncing of
sentence) from a certain audience (say, the judge), and then
build the rest of our account around this, as we did, with some
strain, in the case of the order? Not with plausibility. It is not
even possible, in other than a formal sense, to isolate, among all
the participants in the procedure (trial, marriage, game) to which
the utterance belongs, a particular audience to whom the
utterance can be said to be addressed.
Does this mean that the approach I suggested to the elucidation
of the notion of illocutionary force is entirely mistaken? I do not
think so. Rather, we must distinguish types of case; and then see
what, if anything, is common to the types we have distinguished.
What we initially take from Grice-with modifications-is an at
least partially analytical account of an act of communication,
an act which might indeed be performed nonverbally and yet
exhibit all the essential characteristics of a (nonverbal) equivalent
of an illocutionary act. We gain more than this. For the account
enables us to understand how such an act may be linguistically
conventionalized right up to the point at which illocutionary
force is exhausted by meaning (in Austin's sense); and in this
understanding the notion of wholly overt or essentially avowable
intention plays an essential part. Evidently, in these cases, the
illocutionary act itself is not essentially a conventional act, an act
done as conforming to a convention; it may be that the act is con-
ventional, done as conforming to a convention, only in so far as

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the means used to perform it are conventional. To speak only

conventional means which are also linguistic means, the extent
to which the act is one done as conforming to conventions may
depend solely on the extent to which conventional linguistic
meaning exhausts illocutionary force.
At the other end of the scale-the end, we may say, from
which Austin began-we have illocutionary acts which are
essentially conventional. The examples I mentioned just now will
serve-marrying, redoubling, giving out, pronouncing sentence,
bringing in a verdict. Such acts could have no existence outside
the rule- or convention-governed practices and procedures of
which they essentially form parts. Let us take the standard case
in which the participants in these procedures know the rules and
their roles, and are trying to play the game and not wreck it.
Then they are presented with occasions on which they have to,
or may, perform an illocutionary act which forms part of, or
furthers, the practice or procedure as a whole; and sometimes
they have to make a decision within a restricted range of alter-
natives (for example, to pass or redouble, to pronounce sentence
of imprisonment for some period not exceeding a certain limit).
Between the case of such acts as these and the case of the illo-
cutionary act not essentially conventional, there is an important
likeness and an important difference. The likeness resides in the
fact that, in the case of an utterance belonging to a convention-
governed practice or procedure, the speaker's utterance is stand-
ardly intended to further, or affect the course of, the practice in
question in some one of the alternative ways open, and intended
to be recognized as so intended. I do not mean that such an act
could never be performed unintentionally. A player might let slip
the word "redouble" without meaning to redouble; but if the
circumstances are appropriate and the play strict, then he has
redoubled (or he may be held to have redoubled). But a player
who continually did this sort of thing would not be asked to play
again, except by sharpers. Forms can take charge, in the absence
of appropriate intention; but when they do, the case is essentially
deviant or nonstandard. There is present in the standard case,
that is to say, the same element of wholly overt and avowable
intention as in the case of the act not essentially conventional.

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The difference is a more complicated affair. We have, in these

cases, an act which is conventional in two connected ways.
First, if things go in accordance with the rules of the procedure
in question, the act of furthering the practice in the way intended
is an act required or permitted by those rules, an act done as
falling under the rules. Second, the act is identified as the act it
is just because it is performed by the utterance of a form of words
conventional for the performance of that act. Hence the speaker's
utterance is not only intended to further, or affect the course of,
the practice in question in a certain conventional way; in
the absence of any breach of the conventional conditions for
furthering the procedure in this way, it cannot fail to do so.
And here we have the contrast between the two types of case.
In the case of an illocutionary act of a kind not essentially con-
ventional, the act of communication is performed if uptake is
secured, if the utterance is taken to be issued with the complex
overt intention with which it is issued. But even though the act
of communication is performed, the wholly overt intention which
lies at the core of the intention complex may, without any breach of
rules or conventions, be frustrated. The audience response (belief, ac-
tion, or attitude) may simply not be forthcoming. It is different
with the utterance which forms part of a wholly convention-
governed procedure. Granted that uptake is secured, then any
frustration of the wholly overt intention of the utterance (the
intention to further the procedure in a certain way) must be
attributable to a breach of rule or convention. The speaker who
abides by the conventions can avowably have the intention to
further the procedure in the way to which his current linguistic
act is conventionally appropriated only if he takes it that the
conventional conditions for so furthering it are satisfied and hence
takes it that his utterance will not only reveal his intentions but give them
effect. There is nothing parallel to this in the case of the illocution-
ary act of a kind not essentially conventional. In both cases, we
may say, speakers assume the responsibility for making their in-
tentions overt. In one case (the case of the convention-constituted
procedure) the speaker who uses the explicitly performative form
also explicitly assumes the responsibility for making his overt
intention effective. But in the other case the speaker cannot, in

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the speech act itself, explicitly assume any such responsibility.

For there are no conditions which can conventionally guarantee
the effectiveness of his overt intention. Whether it is effective or
not is something that rests with his audience. In the one case,
therefore, the explicitly performative form may be the name of
the very act which is performed if and only if the speaker's overt
intention is effective; but in the other case it cannot be the name
of this act. But of course-and I shall recur to this thought-the
sharp contrast I have here drawn between two extreme types of
case must not blind us to the existence of intermediate types.
Acts belonging to convention-constituted procedures of the
kind I have just referred to form an important part of human
communication. But they do not form the whole nor, we may
think, the most fundamental part. It would be a mistake to take
them as the model for understanding the notion of illocutionary
force in general, as Austin perhaps shows some tendency to do
when he both insists that the illocutionary act is essentially a
conventional act and connects this claim with the possibility of
making the act explicit by the use of the performative formula. It
would equally be a mistake, as we have seen, to generalize the
account of illocutionary force derived from Grice's analysis; for
this would involve holding, falsely, that the complex overt in-
tention manifested in any illocutionary act always includes the
intention to secure a certain definite response or reaction in an
audience over and above that which is necessarily secured if the
illocutionary force of the utterance is understood. Nevertheless,
we can perhaps extract from our consideration of two con-
trasting types of case something which is common to them both
and to all the other types which lie between them. For the illo-
cutionary force of an utterance is essentially something that is
intended to be understood. And the understanding of the force
of an utterance in all cases involves recognizing what may be
called broadly an audience-directed intention and recognizing it
as wholly overt, as intended to be recognized. It is perhaps this
fact which lies at the base of the general possibility of the explicit
performative formula; though, as we have seen, extra factors
come importantly into play in the case of convention-constituted
procedures.

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Once this common element in all illocutionary acts is clear,

we can readily acknowledge that the types of audience-directed
intention involved may be very various and, also, that different
types may be exemplified by one and the same utterance.
I have set in sharp contrast those cases in which the overt
intention is simply to forward a definite and convention-governed
practice (for example, a game) in a definite way provided for by
the conventions or rules of the practice and those cases in which the
overt intention includes that of securing a definite response
(cognitive or practical) in an audience over and above that which
is necessarily secured if uptake is secured. But there is something
misleading about the sharpness of this contrast; and it would
certainly be wrong to suppose that all cases fall clearly and neatly
into one or another of these two classes. A speaker whose job it
is to do so may offer information, instructions, or even advice,
and yet be overtly indifferent as to whether or not his information
is accepted as such, his instructions followed, or his advice taken.
His wholly overt intention may amount to no more than that of
making available-in a "take it or leave it" spirit-to his audience
the information or instructions or opinion in question; though
again, in some cases, he may be seen as the mouthpiece, merely,
of another agency to which may be attributed at least general
intentions of the kind that can scarcely be attributed, in the par-
ticular case, to him. We should not find such complications dis-
couraging; for we can scarcely expect a general account of lin-
guistic communication to yield more than schematic outlines,
which may almost be lost to view when every qualification is
added which fidelity to the facts requires.

P. F. STRAWSON
University College, Oxford

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