Illocutionary Force
Elocution is the study of spoken communication, focusing especially on how words are delivered.
So the way we pronounce the words we say, how we arrange them grammatically, the cadence and pacing of our speech, and the tone we use, alongside more base-level concerns like our accent and the volume of our voice, are all components of our elocution.
Within the same context—that of linguistics, philosophy, and communication theory—“locution” refers to the intention of our verbal communications, and “perlocution” is what happens as a result of our having spoken.
So if I tell you to stop playing on your phone and do your homework, my locution is nudging you toward scholastic effort and my perlocution, I hope, will be you finishing your homework, rather than spending more time playing Candy Crush or watching TikTok videos.
Illocution, in contrast, refers to the act of speaking the words that make up the bulk of our verbal communicative efforts.
So the way in which I say “stop playing on your phone and do your homework” informs the tone of the conversation, says things about our relationship and the dynamics therein, and can elicit different responses—different perlocutionary outcomes—because you might think I’m joking (if I utter them using the right tone, volume, etc), or you might be distressed, cowed, or psychologically distracted if I say them with too much intensity or with an undertone of implied threat or violence.
The literal words we use, then, are important to what we communicate, as they carry a huge portion of the information we hope to convey.
The “illocutionary force” of our words, though, also contain a significant amount of data that shapes and contextualizes what we’re saying, much of which is parsed subconsciously, but which can also confuse our intended audience (especially when our illocution is seemingly discordant with the words we speak) rather than enlightening them.
Important to the concept of illocutionary force, according to the folks who study this aspect of linguistics, is the alignment of our illocution with the content of our communication (the words we say and how we say them).
It’s possible to evoke the precise opposite action in those to whom we’re speaking because we fail to deliver our message with sufficient illocutionary force, just as it’s possible to reduce the impact of something that we say by recontextualizing it, turning a threat into a joke (for instance) by introducing discord into our delivery.
This collection of terms is used somewhat differently by different linguists, speech act theorists, and philosophers, but the idea that our delivery of spoken communication might contain subtext that isn’t always obvious to deliverer or recipient is useful, as it can help us figure out where conversational wires might become crossed, how we might become more effective communicators, and why the words we say don’t always come across in their intended, literal sense to those with whom we’re speaking.