Language in Use: The Illocutionary Force of a Sentence

Abstract

The study and analysis of different aspects of language as an effective means of communication is the main concern of linguistics. Form, meaning, and function are some of the key aspects of language while analyzing the utterances used in communication or interaction. This article makes an attempt at examining the relationships between form, the physical appearance; and function, the illocutionary force of English sentences. This study adopted systematic review and content analysis as the methods in which conclusions were derived by synthesizing the examples and findings found in multiple resources. The conclusions drawn in this study were that forms are straight forward while determining their meaning is obfuscatory; and the relationship between form and meaning is arbitrary. When language is in use to serve communicative needs, there is often found multiple relationship between the form of an utterance and its function, the illocutionary act.