Perlocutionary

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. The act of influencing someone’s feelings, thoughts, or actions through utterances
2. Achieving an effect or reaction in a listener as a result of spoken language
3. Describing the effect of speech acts on the attitudes or behaviors of others

Etymology: Perlocutionary is built from "perlocution" plus the suffix "-ary". The "perlocution" part comes from the philosophy of language, where J. L. Austin, in the lectures later published as "How to Do Things with Words," distinguished the act of saying something from the effect the saying has on the hearer. Austin's pairing was "locution" (the saying itself) and "illocution" (what the speaker does in saying it, such as promising or warning). "Perlocution" was his term for the consequence, the persuading, alarming or amusing that follows. The suffix "-ary" is an English adjective ending, drawn from Latin "-arius" and used to form adjectives meaning "relating to" or "characterised by." So the adjective simply means "relating to a perlocution," that is, relating to the effect a spoken utterance produces in its listener. The distinction matters because the same sentence can be an illocution in one context and a perlocution in another. A warning is an illocutionary act; the listener's fear that results is the perlocutionary effect.