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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 29:1 (2019) ► pp.33–56

Rejecting and challenging illocutionary acts

| South-West University

This paper examines aspects of strategic interaction and the construction of the social actor in a neo-Austinian framework of illocutionary acts. The basic premise of the neo-Austinian framework is conventionality, according to which illocutionary acts depend on social agreement. An important part of the framework is the felicity condition of entitlement, directly related to the hearer’s understanding of the conventions that should hold for an act performance. Two strategies of challenging and/or rejecting illocutionary acts are then identified tentatively dubbed looping and backfiring, related to the hearer’s perception of when the entitlement felicity condition is flouted. Both strategies can be overtly or covertly confrontational and demonstrate that in their social quality illocutionary acts serve to construct the social actor and build up interpersonal relations.

Keywords: strategic interaction, illocutionary acts, entitlement, social actor, rejecting, challenging
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The neo-Austinian framework for illocutionary acts
    • 2.1Illocutionary acts
    • 2.2Challenging and rejecting illocutionary acts
    • 2.3The entitlement felicity condition
    • 2.4Constructing the social actor
  • 3.Rejecting and challenging illocutionary acts in strategic interaction – some illustrations
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 7 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.17041.cha
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