Yesterday I made a passing reference to Speech Act Theory.  This communications theory recognizes that in speech, something greater than information transfer is occurring.  Once you get into the literature (either secular communications studies by folks like Austin and then Searle, or in some hermeneutics writings by Kevin Vanhoozer, for instance), you will meet terms like locution, illocution and perlocution.  Locution roughly equates to the words themselves, as traditionally used.  Illocution refers to the force and intent of a speech act.  Perlocution equates to what is brought about in the listener.

Speech Act Theory tends to focus primarily on the illocutionary aspects of speech communication – the force or intent, what you are trying to do by what you say.  So let’s linger there for a post and allow the terms they use to prompt our thinking about what we intend to do when we communicate.    Remember, at every point in a sermon, you are trying to achieve something by your communication.  What are you trying to achieve?  Haddon Robinson teaches that the only ways to develop an idea are to explain it, prove it, or apply it.  This simple observation has profound impact on our hermeneutics (what was the author seeking to do), and on our message preparation (what am I trying to achieve in this section, in this “illustration,” etc.)

In a similar way, let’s look at the five main categories Searle offered in respect to illocutionary intent:

1. Assertives: statements that  commit a speaker to the truth of an expressed proposition. As preachers we have a privileged duty to assert the truth, reality as it really is from God’s perspective.

2. Directives: statements that attempt to cause the hearer to take a particular action.   Again, as preachers there are times when we seek to be directive in our communication, that we all might be doers and not hearers only.

3. Commissives: statements which commit the speaker to a course of action as described by the propositional content (in what is said). Perhaps a smaller element in most preaching, but as the speaker, and certainly as a leader, we will sometimes commit ourselves to something by what we say.

4. Expressives: statements that express the “sincerity condition of the speech act”. That is to say, these express the speaker’s attitudes and emotions toward what is said.  Surely there is a place for this in preaching, lest we be impassible in our communication, even though God wasn’t in His (in Scripture).  Where to express our attitude and emotion in a message, and how, is worthy of our thoughtful consideration.

5. Declaratives: statements that attempt to change the world by “representing it as having been changed”. Perhaps more for moments like baptism and marriage, when reality is actually changed by what is said, but worth considering in respect to our preaching.  (Perhaps in a negative sense, when do we seek to speak declaratively when reality has not actually been changed?  Some prayer is spoken in declaratives, which borders on presumption in some cases!)

Long words, sometimes complicated definitions.  But some of us wouldn’t be hurt as communicators to think through, using these categories, what we’re intending to do when we open our mouths to preach.