A perlocutionary act is any speech act that amounts to persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something. When examining perlocutionary acts, the effect in the hearer or reader is emphasized. Unlike illocutionary acts, which stress some linguistic performance, a perlocutionary act's effect is in some sense external to the performance.

See also

J. L. Austin -- linguistics -- performative utterance -- pragmatics -- semantics

References

Searle, John. Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press. 1969 ISBN 0521071844