4. Propositional content conditions

Propositional content conditions relate to the state of affairs predicated in the utterance. For example, for both a promise and a warning, the content of the utterance must be about a future event. A further content condition for a promise requires that the future event will be a future act of the speaker. A valid apology must predicate a past act of the speaker.

The theory of felicity conditions helps to account for the relationship between specific illocutionary acts within the same category.

Felicity conditions on different speech acts

	Preparatory	Sincerity	Essential	Propositional Content
Representative: assertion	1. S believes H doesn’t know P	1. S believes p.	1. Counts as an assertion of p.	1. Any p.
Directive: request	1. S believes H able to do A. 2. A is smth H would not normally do	1. S wants H to do A.	1. Counts as attempt to get H to do A.	1. Future A of H.
Directive: question	1. A doesn’t know P. 2. P is smth H would not normally provide.	1. S wants to know p.	1. Counts as attempt to elicit p from H.	1. Any p.
Commissive: promise	1. S believes H wants A done. 2.A is smth S would not normally do.	1.S intends to do A.	1. Counts as obligation to do A.	1.Future A of S
Expressive: thanking	1. S believes A benefits S	1.S feels appreciation for A.	1.Counts as expression of appreciation for A.	1.Past A of H
Declaration: naming	1.S has authority to name x.	1. S intends to name X.	1. Counts as naming of X.	1. Name for X.

Consider two different types of directives (requests and orders) and commissives (promises and threats).

Commissives
	Promise	Threat
Preparatory conditions	1.S believes h wants A done.	1.S believes H doesn’t want A done.

Directives
	Requests	Orders
Preparatory conditions	1. S believes H able to do A. A is smth H would not normally do.	1. S believes H able to do A. 2. A is smth H would not normally do. 3. S has authority over H

Speech Act Verbs

As Wierzbicka points out, our life consists "to a phenomenal extent of speech acts. From morning to night, we ask, answer, quarrel, argue, promise, boast, scold, complain, nag, praise, thank, confide, reproach, hint… Moreover, from morning to night, we seek to interpret what other people are saying, i.e. what kind of speech acts they are performing. Virtually every time someone opens his or her mouth in our presence, we seek to categorize their utterance as this or that kind of speech act. Was this a threat? Or just a warning? Was this a suggestion or rather a request? Was this a criticism or just a casual remark? Was this a hint?" (Wierzbicka 1987:3).

Speech act words are really extremely important in the world of human action and interaction. The set of speech act verbs reflects a certain interpretation of this world. To understand an English-speaking society and to have access to its culture one has to understand this interpretation. There are kinds of speech acts for which English has no names. But the categories for which english does provide names are evidently particularly important. They shape their perception of human attitudes and human relations. They reflect their perceptions and they organize them. It is crucially important to understand what these "names" mean.

The primary function of speech act verbs consists in interpreting people's speech acts, not in performing speech acts. In normal interaction, we don't need speech act verbs to make clear the nature of the speech acts which we wish to perform. When we perform speech acts, we express, directly, first person attitudes. When we interpret other people's speech acts, we attribute to them indirectly, certain first person attitudes. In explicating speech act verbs in a first person format we are modelling the attitudes conveyed in first person expressions (I/we warn you) or attributed to the speakers, rightly or wrongly, in the third person reports.

All illocutionary verbs indispensibly possess two semes:

1. the seme of locution (speaking) which consists ofthe seme of the utterance act and the seme of propositional act (Searle 1969:23)

2. the seme of illocution.

There are also delocutionary verbs characterizing peculiarity of speaking itself: to bawl for smth., to whisper, to shout, etc.

Many speech act verbs can be used performatively, i.e. when used in the first person, present tense, they indicate the nature (illocutionary force) of the utterance.