What is commitment between illocutionary acts?

Definition
	Commitment between illocutionary acts is a condition in which the speaker's commitment to one illocutionary act necessarily means the commitment to some other illocutionary act, regardless of the context of utterance.

Examples (English)
	The performance of an act of demanding commits one to an act of requesting The commitment to a promise commits one to an act of asserting that one is not saying one does not promise The commitment to a conjunctive illocutionary act commits the speaker to each of the elementary illocutionary acts contained within it

Source
	Searle and Vanderveken 1985 25, 81, 84

Context for this page:

Concept module: commitment between illocutionary acts
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): C
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

© 2004 SIL International