meaningful words or symbols to communicate with the listener . A perlocutionary act is the act which happens as a result of saying something , for example if someone makes a well-executed argument , a perlocutionary effect of this would be the listener agreeing with them . An illocutionary act is when saying something is doing something . Some examples of illocutionary acts are saying ‘ I do ’ in a wedding ceremony or writing an ‘ X ’ next to your chosen candidate on a ballot paper ( Austin , 1975 ). These speech acts do not result in the consequence of marrying someone or voting for someone , they themselves are the act of doing these things .
In order for an utterance to be an illocutionary act , certain ‘ felicity ’ conditions need to be met , Austin says these conditions can be written or unwritten conventions . Illocutionary acts can be acts of subordination if the speaker has authority , but authoritative illocutions are not always acts of subordination . Austin describes verdictive illocutions as those in which an authority ranks and values , for example an umpire calling foul . This is distinguished from illocutions that grant or deprive people from certain rights or powers , which are labelled exertive ( Austin , 1975 ). This then raises the question of how we can measure the illocutionary force of a speech act , in this case the illocutionary force of pornography .
One way we could measure the illocutionary force of pornography to subordinate women is by observing the perlocutionary effects of the illocutionary act , in this case it would be accounts and statistics of sexual violence . In 1993 Langton wrote that sexual violence is systematic as the perpetrators are nearly always part of the sex class of men and the victims are nearly always part of the sex class of women ( Langton , 1993 , pp . 307 ), nearly 30 years later this still holds true as statistics show that 1 in 5 women have been raped or sexually assaulted compared to 1 in 20 men ( Rape Crisis , 2022 ). This fulfils one of Langton ’ s criteria for an act of subordination , which is that it legitimizes discrimination against a group of people . Mackinnon ’ s claim that pornography ranks women as sex objects is another way that the illocutionary force of subordination is shown and statistics support this claim also ( Fritz et al , 2020 ).
Mackinnon goes even further than this and argues that pornography silences women . This means that the conflict between pornography and censorship is not just one between pornographers right to free speech and women ’ s right to equality , but it is in fact a conflict between free speech itself . The claim is that by showing women in sexual situations where consent is either silently assumed , or in some cases the woman will be shown saying ‘ no ’ and then be overpowered anyway , this then translates to real life sexual situations where women are unable to say ‘ no ’. Langton explains that women being unable to say ‘ no ’ does not mean that they literally cannot utter the words but rather that they can say ‘ no ’ and it will not be taken by the listener to mean no , it has lost its illocutionary force and is rendered unspeakable . Langton affirms that even though the woman still has the ability to speak , this result is still a form of silencing akin to how black people were silenced when trying to vote or homosexuals were silenced when trying to marry . They had every ability to either mark an ‘ X ’ on a ballot sheet , or to say ‘ I do ’ at the altar , but since each group cannot vote or marry respectively , their words do nothing and they have been silenced . This is what Langton refers to as ‘ illocutionary disablement ’ ( Langton , 1993 , pp . 315 ).
Linda Lovelace ’ s book ‘ Ordeal ’ is a particularly troubling example of illocutionary disablement . Following a harrowing career as a well-known porn star , Lovelace released an autobiographical
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