ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the Interpersonal Rhetoric, and continues the polemical note sounded at the end of the preceding one. It justifies the approach towards illocutionary force against competing positions. The competing positions are: firstly, 'orthodox speech-act theory' in the mould of J. L. Austin and Searle, and secondly, the performative hypothesis of Ross, Lakoff, Sadock, and others. A key point in the will be the need to make a radical separation between the analysis of illocutions and the analysis of illocutionary verbs. A special case of the Illocutionary-Verb Fallacy is what may be called the performative fallacy. This is the thesis that a performative, an utterance containing an explicit performative verb, is the canonical form of utterance, the yardstick in terms of which the forces of other utterances are to be explicated. Both Austin and Searle flirt with the Performative Fallacy, and end up embracing the Illocutionary-Verb Fallacy.
