Exercising Illocutionary Power, Or: How to Do Things with Other People’s Words

The illocutionary force of our speech is not fixed forever—we can, by retracting, amending, or blocking, change the speech acts performed by past utterances. This kind of retroactive change is usually thought to be only available for our own speech acts. For example, I cannot retract a promise someone else has made. This chapter argues that ordinary conversational mechanisms allow speakers to ‘push’ new illocutionary force onto other people’s speech acts, and so changing the (conversational) past is easier than we might think. These ‘illocutionary pushes’ can be reinforced by unjust social hierarchies, undermining the illocutionary independence of marginalised speakers. The exercise of illocutionary power is then often used to reinforce an oppressive status quo.