Directive Speech Act

A Directive Speech Act is a speech act whose point is to get its addressee to perform an action.

• AKA: Directive Illocutionary Act, Directive Act.
• Context:
  • It can have a world-to-word direction of fit: it is satisfied when the addressee's action makes the world match its content.
  • It is one of the five basic kinds of illocutionary act in Searle's classification, alongside assertives, commissives, expressives and declarations.
  • It can be performed indirectly, as when "It's cold in here" is used to get someone to close the window.
  • It can share an utterance with another kind of act: "I bet you five pounds it will rain" both directs the hearer and commits the speaker.
  • ...
  • It can range from being a Request to being a Directive Order, depending on whether its speaker invokes a position of authority over the addressee.
  • ...
• Example(s):
  • Requests, which express the speaker's wish and leave the addressee free to decline, such as:
    • Work Requests.
  • Directive Orders, which are issued from a position of authority, such as:
    • Mandatory and prohibitory judicial orders, such as injunctions.
    • Work Orders.
  • Pieces of advice, which recommend an action for the addressee's own benefit.
  • ...
• Counter-Example(s):
  • A Commissive Speech Act, a sibling speech act, which commits the speaker rather than the addressee to a future action.
  • An Assertive Speech Act, a sibling speech act such as a statement, which represents how things are rather than asking anyone to act.
  • An Imperative Sentence, a grammatical form that often expresses a directive but is a kind of sentence, not an act.
  • ...
• See: Speech Act, Imperative Sentence, Request.

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References

2020

• Mitchell Green. (2020). Speech Acts. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantive revision 2020-09-24. Retrieved 2026-10-15; no archive snapshot confirmed. Supports direction of fit and the authority condition for commands: "speech acts such as commands have world-to-word direction of fit"; a command is issued "in her capacity as a person in a position of authority".

1976

• John R. Searle. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 1–23. Retrieved 2026-10-15 (abstract); archived snapshot of 2026-10-05. Supports the five-way classification: "The five basic kinds of illocutionary acts are: representatives (or assertives), directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations".

Undated

• Wikipedia. Illocutionary act. Retrieved 2026-10-15; archived snapshot of 2026-10-11. Supports the definition and the examples: "directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice"; and that the classes "are not mutually exclusive".