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Comprehending Illocutionary Force Memory & Cognition 2001, 29 (1), 83-90 Comprehending illocutionary force THOMAS HOLTGRAVES and AARON ASHLEY Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana According to speech act theory (Searle, 1969), utterances have both a propositional content and an illocutionary force (the speech act performed with the utterance). Four experiments were conducted to examine whether utterance comprehension involves speech act recognition. Participants in all ex- periments first read remarks that could be characterizedby a particular speech act (e.g.,beg). A recog- nition probe reaction time procedure was used in Experiments 1 and 2; participants indicated whether a probe word had literally appeared in the last remark that they had read. Participants were signifi- cantly slower at making this judgment (and made significantly more errors) when the probe repre- sented the speech act performed with the prior remark than when it did not. A lexical decision task was used in Experiments 3 and 4, and participants were significantly faster at verifying target words rep- resenting the speech act performed with a remark, relative to control words. Overall, the results sug- gest that speech act recognition may be an important component of the comprehension of conversa- tional remarks. Language use is a form of social action. When people performing an illocutionary act, or act in saying. The speak, they are usually attempting to do something with term illocutionary act refers to the specific force associ- their words; they are complimenting, complaining, criti- ated with the uttering of particular words in a particular cizing, and so on. But the link between language and ac- context; it is the specific speech act (e.g., warn, request, tion is not always clear. The same action (e.g., a request) promise, etc.) that a speaker performs. This view has clear can be performed in many different ways, and the same implications for models of languagecomprehension, be- utterance can, depending on the context, perform many cause it suggests that the comprehension of an utterance different actions. Moreover, it is not clear whether com- will involve recognition of both the propositional mean- prehensioneven involvesrecognition of the action that is ing and the act performed with the remark. performed with an utterance. That is, when we compre- Although the illocutionary act places some restrictions hend a speaker’sremark, does that comprehension involve on propositionalmeaning (e.g., one cannot request another recognition, at some level, of the action that the speaker to perform some act in the past), it is possible for utterances is undertaking? Does comprehension of “Don’t forget to to have the same propositional meaning but perform dif- stop at the store” involve recognition that the speaker is ferent speech acts. Consider the following utterances: performing the act of reminding? Surprisingly, with the (1) I predict you will come to my party. exception of research on recognition of indirect speech acts (e.g., Gibbs, 1983), very little empirical research has (2) Will you come to my party? addressed this issue. The purpose of this research was to (3) Please come to my party. undertake some initial analyses of the extent to which comprehension involves recognition of the action—or The propositional meaning (that the addressee will at- speech act—that is performed with an utterance. tend the speaker’s party) is the same for all three utter- The view of language as social action is most clearly ances. Yet, in most contexts the first has the force of a captured in speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, prediction,the second a question,and the third a request. 1969; Searle & Vanderveken,1985). Fundamentalto this How is it that addressees recognize the specific speech approach is the concept that language use involves the acts performed with these utterances? Sometimes an ut- simultaneous performance of multiple acts. At one level, terance will contain a performative verb, a verb that names a speaker is performing a locutionary act, or producing a the speech act performed. For example, in (1) the verb pre- sentence with a particular sense and reference (roughly, dict names the specific speech act that is performed with its propositional meaning). Simultaneously, a speaker is the utterance. But many times an explicit performative is not part of the utterance, in which case the speech act performed is named with an implicit verb (a verb that is not literally in the remark). For example, in most contexts This research was supportedby a grant from the National Science Foun- (3) performs the speech act of requesting, and the perfor- dation (SBR 9601311) awarded to the first author. Experiment 1 was re- mative verb (request) is implicit.How is it that addressees ported at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Psychological Soci- ety, Washington, DC. Correspondence regarding this manuscript should will recognize that it is a request that is being performed be addressed to T. Holtgraves, Department of PsychologicalScience, Ball with this remark? In general,speech act theorists have sug- State University, Muncie, IN 47306 (e-mail: [email protected]). gested that sentence type and mood, intonation, back- 83 Copyright 2001 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 84 HOLTGRAVES AND ASHLEY ground knowledge,and otherrelevant features of the con- ters’ emotional reactions (Gernsbacher, Goldsmith, & text come into play and aid the addressee’srecognitionof Robertson, 1992) appear to be made under certain con- the speech act performed (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). ditions. These inferences are made as a means of ex- But a more fundamental question needs to be addressed. plaining why various actions have occurred in the text, as Specifically, is it the case that addressees actually recog- a result of a general search after meaning (Graesser nize the performance of a specific speech act? When et al., 1994). In a similar manner, illocutionary force can Andy says to Bob “I’ll definitely do it tomorrow,” does be viewed as representing the “why” behind a particular Bob’s representation of Andy’s utterance include the il- remark; the remark is being uttered in order to perform locutionary force of the remark (that it is a promise)? a particular act. Thus Bill says “I’ll definitely do it to- Note, in this regard, that there are alternatives to speech morrow” to Bob in order to perform a promise. Hence, act theory for which illocutionaryforce recognition is not Bob’srepresentation of Bill’sremark may include the in- required (see, e.g., Cohen & Levesque, 1990). ference that his utterance constitutes a promise. Although activation of illocutionary force has not yet Finally, the research of Uleman (1987) and others on been investigated, Schweller, Brewer, and Dahl (1976) spontaneous trait inferences also supportsthe possibility have demonstratedthat readers often misremember speech of illocutionary force activation. Spontaneous trait in- act verbs (e.g., ask) as having been present in sentences ferences are dispositional inferences made about a per- (e.g., The cute little girl told her mother she wanted a son that occur when one is comprehending a description drink) that they have read earlier. This suggests that il- of that person’sbehavior. For example, the sentence The locutionary force at some level and at some point in time librarian carries the old women’s groceries across the is playing a role in the comprehension and representa- street implies that the librarian is “helpful,” and com- tion of these sentences. More recently, Amrhein (1992) prehension of this sentence appears to involve an activa- has shown that the comprehension of certain speech acts tion of the trait helpful. Using a variety of methods, in- (e.g., promise) involves recognition of the components cluding recognition probe reaction times (Uleman, Han, underlyingillocutionaryforce. For example, the compre- Roman, & Moskowitz, 1996), cued recall (Winter & hension of promise entails recognition of the speaker’s Uleman, 1984; Winter, Uleman, & Cunniff, 1985), and desire and ability to perform a particular act; hope en- implicit memory (Whitney & Williams-Whitney, 1990), tails recognition of the speaker’sdesire but not his or her researchers have documented the on-line activation of ability to perform the particular act; and so on. In Am- trait inferences. Although there has been some debate rhein’s research, the critical sentences contain explicit about whether or not these inferences are truly sponta- performative verbs (e.g., promise, hope, etc.); whether neous (i.e., automatic) (Bassili & Smith, 1986; Higgins implicit performative verbs are activated at comprehen- & Bargh, 1987), it is clear that under many conditions sion has not been demonstrated. Moreover, other re- such inferences will be made during comprehension. searchers have reported evidence that some explicit per- Just as trait inferences represent the categorization of a formative verbs such as to promise do not require the verbal description, speech act recognition involves the meeting of felicity conditions in order to be validly used assigning of an utterance to a particular speech act cate- (Gibbs & Delaney, 1987). gory. If comprehension of behavior descriptions entails Recognitionof the illocutionary force of implicit per- the activationof trait inferences, it seems reasonable that formatives represents an inference process of sorts; the speech act recognition should accompany the compre- speech act verb is not literally present in the sentence and hension of certain conversation remarks. must be inferred. Although this issue has not been ex- In the present research, we used a recognitionprobe re- amined directly, research on the comprehension of texts action time procedure (Experiments 1 and 2) and a lexi- does support this notion.For example, much research on cal decision task (Experiments 3 and 4) to investigate text processing has been directed toward uncovering the whether or not illocutionary force is activated during extent to which text comprehension involves inferential comprehension. The speech acts used in these studies processing (e.g., Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; were chosen from the list of illocutionary verbs devel- McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992).
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