Explanation
Perlocution is the effect actually achieved by an utterance upon another person's feelings, thoughts, or actions. A warning may cause someone to stop, become frightened, grow suspicious, or do nothing; these outcomes are not identical with the illocutionary act of warning. Perlocution thus redirects attention from the conventionally performed speech act toward what subsequently happens in concrete people and situations. Intended and actual effects may diverge, and one utterance can produce several consequences at once. The concept requires empirical restraint: effect cannot be inferred from wording or intention alone. It must be examined through uptake, later behaviour, or reliable reports and distinguished from mere temporal sequence.
Movement of thought
1. An utterance first enters a situation with particular wording and a recognisable communicative act. 2. The addressee receives it through their own expectations, experience, and situational conditions and forms a response. 3. Feeling, belief, or behaviour actually changes, perhaps differently or more strongly than the speaker intended. 4. A counter-test seeks observable or reported evidence and separates achieved effect from illocution, intention, and temporal coincidence. 5. The utterance returns through its consequences into the relationship and alters subsequent communication without fully controlling its outcome.
Scientific use case
Pragmatics, effects research, and conversation analysis combine utterance data with subsequent response, interviews, or behavioural measures. Comparison and temporal controls support causal attribution.
Example
A physician calmly explains risks and expects questions; the patient then cancels the procedure. The cancellation is an actual perlocutionary consequence, not simply the content of the explanation.
Counterexample
“I warn you” may successfully perform a warning but does not prove that the addressee becomes afraid or changes behaviour. Illocution is not perlocution.
Distinction
Distinguish perlocution from locution as uttered content, illocution as performed act, performativity as conventional reality-making, and intention alone. It is the consequence actually achieved.
Effect on thought and perception
Perlocution reveals the open efficacy of language: utterances can persuade, injure, reassure, or mobilise without speakers determining those consequences by themselves.
Resonance
A sentence leaves one voice and continues within another as feeling, thought, or action; its answer may become visible only long after the moment of speech.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Perlocution“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-103-014. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-103-014The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Austin’s posthumously edited lectures distinguish perlocution from the utterance and from the conventional act performed in saying it. Pages 101–102 concern consequential effects on feelings, thoughts, or actions: convincing someone differs from presenting an argument. The editor’s preface describes reconstruction from notes and related evidence. This is an English technical witness, not a German translation or adoption history.
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Distinguish intention, speech act, and actual effect; making a request does not establish that it was complied with.
References for the historical section
- HC-C-AUSTIN · LectureVIII printed101–102, PDF107–108; Editor’s Prefacevi–vii, PDF4–5 (1-based)