Commissives

Commissives are a class of illocutionary acts in which the speaker commits themselves to a future action. They express the speaker’s intention to perform (or refrain from) some action and thereby establish a personal or social obligation that is meant to be fulfilled in the future. Common commissives include promises, vows, oaths, pledges, and, in some analyses, threats, which commit the speaker to a future course of action contingent on certain conditions.

In speech-act theory, commissives are contrasted with directives (requests or commands), expressives (stating feelings), and declarations (changing the social or institutional state). The central feature of commissives is commitment: the act places the speaker under an obligation to bring about the stated action, though the enforceability and seriousness of that commitment can vary. The felicity of a commissive depends on the speaker’s sincerity, capability, and the intended scope and timing of the action; some commissives are unconditional, others are conditional on future events or other acts.

Linguistically, commissives are realized through tense and aspect that indicate futurity, modal expressions, and sometimes explicit performative verbs. They are studied for their role in trust, negotiation, and social coordination, and for how breaches or reneging on commitments are interpreted linguistically and pragmatically.

In cross-linguistic research, commissive forms are realized in diverse ways, but the core function remains the same: to bind the speaker to a future action and to signal to the addressee the speaker’s willingness to follow through.