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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 20:2 (2010) ► pp.213–228

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Promises, threats, and the foundations of speech act theory

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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 June 2010
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20.2.05bla
I suggest that promises and threats are similar speech acts and pose analogous problems for Speech Act Theory. After showing that they share the same formal types, I argue against there being purportedly fundamental differences between them in regard to explicitability, deontics, and illocution/perlocution. I conclude that the joint analysis of promises and threats suggests the propriety of a holistic theory of illocutionary acts.
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