The present paper concentrates on indirect speech acts and argues that their interpretation can be accounted for without assuming the identification of a specific illocutionary force. Successful communication thus depends on the listener’s identification of the general illocutionary force evoked by an utterance at a level that is sufficiently relevant to prompt the expected response. In this view, metonymic principles that operate within broad illocutionary domains (e.g. directivity) –and not always within specific domains (e.g. requesting)– trigger the inferential process.