The illocutionary shell nouns have a great significance in spoken and academic discourse. Further, the understanding of the concepts, like speech acts, illocutionary acts, and illocutionary force of utterances is crucial in effective language use. In the discussion of illocutionary shell nouns, five terms, i.e., illocutionary act, illocution, locution, perlocution, and illocutionary force are very important. Therefore, these terms have been defined and explained first so that the reader can understand these scaffolding concepts related to illocutionary shell nouns.
1. An Illocutionary Act
An illocutionary act is performed merely through saying something, i.e., an action that a speaker performs by uttering words. In other words, it is an instance of a culturally-defined speech act type which carries a particular illocutionary force (i.e., intended effect of speech). Examples of this sort of act are: assert, question, exclaim, threaten, promise, apologize, command, warn, suggest, request, etc. Commonly, five types of illocutionary acts are acknowledged which are: representatives, directives, commissives, declarative, and expressive.
1.1 Illocution
Illocution (from a pragmatic point of view) is one of the three components of a communicative expression. In simple words, it is an act of speaking or writing something with some specific intention or purpose, e.g., ordering, warning, promising, etc.
1.2 Locution
It is the utterance made by the speaker or writer. In other words, it is an utterance considered in terms of its intrinsic or literal meaning distinct from its purpose or function in a given context.
1.3 Perlocution
Perlocution is the effect that the speaker’s utterance has on the listener. In other words, it is how the speech is received and reacted to by the listener.
The example given below indicates illocutionary act, illocution, locution and perlocution.
When a person says “Don’t you feel cold” in a room whose window is open. The illocution is the purpose or intention of the speaker behind his expression, i.e., the listener should close the window. If we name this illocution as an illocutionary act, it is a request. Further, the literal expression “Don’t you feel cold” is a locution. Furthermore, what response the listener shows (the actual effect of the speaker’s expression) is a perlocution. This might be he closes the window or says something else.
2. Illocutionary Force
When the speaker produces an utterance, he/she has certain intension or purpose in producing that utterance. This intention or purpose is the illocutionary force of the utterance. In other words, this is the power or significance of a given speech act. The illocutionary force of the sentences can be noted easily. For example:
- I promise to work with you. [a promise]
- Sit near the door. [a command]
- Could you open the window? [a request]
- The sky is cloudy. [an assertion of a fact]
- Drive within the specified limit! [a warning]
3. Illocutionary Shell Nouns
Illocutionary shell nouns are a type of abstract nouns such as fact, issue, idea, and problem and are derived from the verbs of speech acts. These nouns, in a particular context, convey or refer to a complex idea and thus facilitate avoiding repetition of long stretches of text. Shell nouns are a class of abstract nouns that can be used (to varying degrees) as conceptual shells for proposition-like complex pieces of information. In other words, illocutionary shell nouns, in their nature, are metalinguistic and their referents (which they meta-represent) are higher order entities, e.g. utterance-acts. These nouns are deverbal abstract nouns (though not all of them), i.e., derived from speech act verbs. The action they name or refer to has the specific illocutionary force of the speech act verb they have been derived from. The role these nouns perform is considered complex as it involves the trans-categorization from one grammatical category (the verb) to another grammatical category (the noun).
The function of these shell nouns is to refer to or shell (i.e. encapsulate) the illocutionary force (communicative purpose or intension) of a speech act. These nouns e.g. statement, promise or request can be employed to describe the speech act itself.
There is a relationship between shell nouns and speech acts because some shell nouns, particularly illocutionary shell nouns are derived from speech act verbs. The examples of speech act verbs are: request, promise, apologize, order, invite, congratulate, etc. The characteristic of these nouns is that they refer to the illocutionary force of the speech act, such as the intention to seek an apology. In other words, the function of these nouns is to refer to or encapsulate the illocutionary force of a speech act. For instance, instead of saying “Akbar made an apology,” one might say “Akbar’s apology was to decrease tension”. In this reformulation, the noun apology stays as a shell noun. A few more examples:
- Najam’s promise was that the money would be returned in due time.
- The order was that all the employees would observe SOPs.
- The understanding was that the aim was unachievable.
In example (a), the noun ‘promise’ refers to the act of promising. In (b), the noun ‘order’ refers to the act of ordering. In (c), the noun ‘understanding’ refers to the act of understanding.
3.1 Deverbal Nominalization & Illocutionary Shell Nouns
Deverbal nominalization (i.e., a syntactic operation) is a process of recategorization through predicate reifying. Actually, reification is the fact that the predicate is conceptualized as an object. Thus it can attain the properties generally associated to nouns, e.g., the possibility to be pluralized. In addition, illocutionary force goes lost when a verb is nominalized. This gradual process of loss comes to fore in two forms. These are the loss of deictic properties (e.g. tense markers), and the backgrounding of the action performers.
The illocutionary shell nouns belong to a wide variety of deverbal nouns from the semantic-pragmatic point of view. They are also a subset of linguistic shell nouns. It means they carry the property of referring to a verbal action performed by the speaker. Similarly, the shell noun used has the illocutionary force of doing the act professed by the verb to which this shell noun is related to. Thus, it becomes clear that the illocutionary nouns whether they perform the function of shell nouns or not, qualify as concepts of communication. It is so because they are used to refer to the acts of verbal communication. Briefly, illocutionary nouns embody concepts which carry certain properties and these properties are named by the speech acts.
4. Speech Acts & Speaker’s Graded Commitment to Propositional Content
The purpose of assertive speech acts is to make the speaker committed (in varying degrees) to the truth of the expressed proposition. An assertive speech act expresses the psychological state, i.e. belief. However, the commitment of the speaker is a graded one as if there were a cline of assertiveness. It means some speakers show that they are more associated to the belief, truth and knowledge as compared to the others.
As regards, the property of graded commitment to a propositional content, i.e., acts may be there in the form of assertions, conjectures, suggestions, guesses, presumption. For example, an assertion presents a proposition as something for which the speaker has a high level of justification. Contrarily, a guess can present a proposition as true but with no justification at all (See 29. Speech Act Theory and Speech Acts).
5. Assertive Shell Nouns
Assertive shell nouns are one type of illocutionary shell nouns. These are the nouns that name assertive speech acts (e.g., assertion, allegation, argument, claim, etc.). The semantics & pragmatics of a shell noun is related to an understanding of illocutions and their categories.
If we analyze the behavioral profile of these (assertive) nouns, we can characterize specific discourse situation speakers’ utterance acts. Herein, the behavioral profile of assertive shell noun means the complementation patterns they occur with (when they appear in reporting or denoting). Assertive shell nouns are important because they name the speech acts which are especially salient in discourse genres that represent the human-universal norm. Further, they are frequently present in such discourse genres.
5.1 The Use of Assertive Shell Nouns
The assertive shell nouns, similar to any other type of assertive speech acts, are used to characterize utterances. It means they are used to refer to acts of asserting, guessing, conjecturing, etc. Further, the construal (understanding or interpretation) behind assertive shell nouns may correspond to the illocutionary force of an assertive speech act. If such is the case, it (construal) must be embodied in the noun behavioral profile, i.e., in the complementation pattern the noun occurs with. Such embodiment is required because certain kinds of nominals need be compatible with certain kinds of containers. Such requirement comes to fore when these nouns occur in reporting and denoting forms (See 25. Shell Nouns and their Role in Discourse).
In conclusion, shell nouns (a class of abstract nouns) can be used (to a varying degree) as conceptual shells for proposition-like complex pieces of information. As illocutionary shell nouns are concerned, they, in their nature, are metalinguistic and their referents (they meta-represent) are higher order entities, e.g. utterance-acts. The role these nouns perform is considered complex as it involves the trans-categorization from one grammatical category (the verb) to another grammatical category (the noun). The function of these shell nouns is to refer to or encapsulate the illocutionary force (i.e., communicative purpose or intension) of a speech act. Further, they enable the speakers and writers discuss the nature and consequences of speech acts briefly as well as in an organized manner. Simply put, the use of illocutionary shell nouns is significant as they help avoid repetition of long stretches of text
Sources Consulted:
Crystal 1980,
Schmid (2000),
Searle (1979),
Vergaro (2015)
