Article published In:
PragmaticsVol. 20:2 (2010) ► pp.213–228
Promises, threats, and the foundations of speech act theory
I suggest that promises and threats are similar speech acts and pose analogous problems for Speech Act Theory. After showing that they share the same formal types, I argue against there being purportedly fundamental differences between them in regard to explicitability, deontics, and illocution/perlocution. I conclude that the joint analysis of promises and threats suggests the propriety of a holistic theory of illocutionary acts.
Keywords: Speech Act Theory, Threats, Promises, Holism
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
References
Árdal, P.S
(1968) And that’s a promise. The Philosophical Quarterly 18.72: 225-237. 
Atiyah, P.S
Austin, J.L
(1962) How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beller, S
(2002) Conditional promises and threats – Cognition and emotion. Proceedings of the Twenty- Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 113-118.
Beller, S. and Bender, A
(2004) Cultural differences in the cognition and emotion of conditional promises and threats – Comparing Germany and Tonga. In K.D. Forbus, D. Gentner and T. Regier (eds), Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 85-90.
Beller, S., A. Bender, and G. Kuhnmünch
(2005) Understanding conditional promises and threats. Thinking & Reasoning 11.3: 209-238.
Bennett, J
(1991) How do gestures succeed? In E. Lepore and R. van Gulick (eds.), John Searle and his critics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 3-15.
Blanco Salgueiro, A
(2004) Palabras al viento. Ensayo sobre la fuerza ilocucionaria. Madrid: Trotta.
Blanco Salgueiro, A et al.
(2007) Un rompecabezas acerca de la fuerza. In C. Martínez . (eds.), Current topics in logic and analytic philosophy. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, pp. 53-77.
Blanco Salgueiro, A
(2008) Cómo hacer cosas malas con palabras: Actos ilocucionarios hostiles y los fundamentos de la Teoría de los Actos de Habla. Crítica, Revista Hispnoamericana de Filosofía 40.118: 93-120.
Cartwright, J.P.W
(1984) An evidentiary theory of promises. Mind 93.370: 230-248.
Castelfranchi, C., and M. Guerini
Conison, J
(1997) The pragmatics of promise. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 10.2: 273-322.
Corredor, C
(2001) A comment on threats and communicative rationality. Theoria 16.40: 147-166.
García-Carpintero, M
(1996) Las ideas, las palabras y las cosas. Barcelona: Ariel.
Grant, C.K
(1949) Promises. Mind 58.231: 359-366.
Habermas, J
(1991) Comments on John Searle: “Meaning, communication and representation”. In E. Lepore and R. Van Gulick (eds.), John Searle and his critics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 17-29.
Habib, A
Habermas, J
(1999) Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Harrison, J
Heath, J
(1995) Threats, promises and communicative action. European Journal of Philosophy 3.3: 225-241.
(1996) Is language a game? Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26.1: 1-28.
Jack, H
(1958) On the analysis of promises. The Journal of Philosophy 55.14: 597-604.
Kimball, R.H
(2006) What’s wrong with argumentum ad baculum? Reasons, threats, and logical norms. Argumentation 201: 89-100.
Kissine, M
(2008) From predictions to promises. How to derive deontic commitment. Pragmatics & Cognition 16.3: 471-491. BoP
BoPMelden, A.I
(1956) On promising. Mind 65.257: 49-66.
Nicoloff, F
Peetz, V
Robins, M.H
(1976) The primacy of promising. Mind 85.339: 321-340.
Searle, J.R
(1965) What is a speech act? In M. Black (ed.), Philosophy in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. London: Allen and Unwin.
(1969) Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(1975) A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Searle, J.R., and D. Vanderveken
(1985) Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vanderveken, D
(1990/91) Meaning and Speech Acts, 2 vols1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Verbrugge, S., K. Dieussaert, W. Schaeken, and W. Van Belle
(2004) Promise is debt, threat another matter: The effect of credibility on the interpretation of conditional promises and threats. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 58.2: 106-112.
Walton, D
(2000) Scare Tactics. Arguments that Appeal to Fear and Threat. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Walton, D., and F. Macagno
(2007) The fallaciousness of threats: Character and ad baculum
. Argumentation 211: 63-81.
Cited by
Cited by 18 other publications
Casey, John
2022. Beliefs, Commitments, and Ad Baculum Arguments. Languages 7:2 ► pp. 107 ff. 
Chen, Jinshi
2021. “You are in Trouble!”: A Discursive Psychological Analysis of Threatening Language in Chinese Cellphone Fraud Interactions. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 34:4 ► pp. 1065 ff.
Davidson, Ronald M.
2014. Studies indhāraṇīliterature II: Pragmatics ofdhāraṇīs. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Etaywe, Awni
2023. Heteroglossia and Identifying Victims of Violence and Its Purpose as Constructed in Terrorist Threatening Discourse Online. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 36:2 ► pp. 907 ff.
Ioanesyan, E. R.
2022. Discursive Formulas Derived from Propositional Predicates. Nauchnyi dialog 11:8 ► pp. 24 ff.
Ioanesyan, E. R.
2023. Illocutionary Indicators: A Comparative-Typological Perspective. Nauchnyi dialog 12:8 ► pp. 143 ff.
Kern, Beate
2018. La promesa atenuada en el discurso parlamentario español. Spanish in Context 15:2 ► pp. 177 ff.
Megger, Dawid & Igor Wysocki
2022. Coercion, voluntary exchange, and the Austrian School of Economics. Synthese 201:1
Moulinou, Iphigenia
Nick, I. M.
2018. In the wake of hate: A mixed-method analysis of anonymous threatening communications sent during the 2016 US presidential election. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 41:2 ► pp. 183 ff.
Nowosielski, Diána
2016. Az ígéret beszédaktusának vizsgálata a mai magyar nyelvhasználatban. Jelentés és Nyelvhasználat 3:1 ► pp. 63 ff.
Peters, Arne & Marije van Hattum
2021. Pseudonyms as carriers of contextualised threat in 19th-century Irish English threatening notices. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 42:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Rodríguez, Juan Luis
2022. The interplay of greetings and promises. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 167 ff.
Slutskiy, Pavel
2021. Threats of the Use of Force: “Mere Speech” or Rights Violation?. In Communication and Libertarianism, ► pp. 165 ff.
Tavory, Iddo
2020. Interviews and Inference: Making Sense of Interview Data in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Sociology 43:4 ► pp. 449 ff.
Wiśniewska-Przymusińska, Malwina
2020. T/V Pronouns and FTAs inthe Works of Sir Thomas Malory: Medieval Politeness and Impoliteness in Directives, Expressives, and Commissives. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 55:1 ► pp. 139 ff.
Zhukova, Valentina
2023. How to threaten in Russian: a constructionist approach. Russian Linguistics 47:2 ► pp. 141 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.