在言语行为理论中，言后行为是由说话引起的或作为说话结果的一种行为或心理状态。这也被称为事后效应。“言外行为和言后行为之间的区别很重要，”Ruth M.Kempson说：

"The perlocutionary act is the consequent effect on the hearer which the speaker intends should follow from his utterance."

凯普森总结了约翰·L·奥斯汀在1962年出版的《如何用语言做事》中最初提出的三种相互关联的言语行为：

"A speaker utters sentences with a particular meaning (locutionary act), and with a particular force (illocutionary act), in order to achieve a certain effect on the hearer (perlocutionary act)."

实例和意见

A.P.Martinich在其著作《交流与参考》中对言后行为的定义如下：

"Intuitively, a perlocutionary act is an act performed by saying something, and not in saying something. Persuading, angering, inciting, comforting and inspiring are often perlocutionary acts; but they would never begin an answer to the question 'What did he say?' Perlocutionary acts, in contrast with locutionary and illocutionary acts, which are governed by conventions, are not conventional but natural acts (Austin [1955], p. 121). Persuading, angering, inciting, etc. cause physiological changes in the audience, either in their states or behavior; conventional acts do not."

事后效应的一个例子

尼古拉斯·阿洛特（Nicholas Allott）在其著作《语用学中的关键术语》（Key Terms in语用学）中给出了这种关于言后行为的观点：

"Consider a negotiation with a hostage-taker under siege. The police negotiator says: 'If you release the children, we'll allow the press to publish your demands.' In making that utterance she has offered a deal (illocutionary act). Suppose the hostage-taker accepts the deal and as a consequence releases the children. In that case, we can say that by making the utterance, the negotiator brought about the release of the children, or in more technical terms, that this was a perlocutionary effect of the utterance."

高喊“火”

在她的书《反击：言论自由与仇恨言论辩论》中，凯瑟琳·盖尔伯解释了在拥挤的场所大喊“着火”的效果：

"In the perlocutionary instance, an act is performed by saying something. For example, if someone shouts 'fire' and by that act causes people to exit a building which they believe to be on fire, they have performed the perlocutionary act of convincing other people to exit the building....In another example, if a jury foreperson declares 'guilty' in a courtroom in which an accused person sits, the illocutionary act of declaring a person guilty of a crime has been undertaken. The perlocutionary act related to that illocution is that, in reasonable circumstances, the accused person would be convinced that they were to be led from the courtroom into a jail cell. Perlocutionary acts are acts intrinsically related to the illocutionary act which precedes them, but discrete and able to be differentiated from the illocutionary act."

手风琴效果

Marina Sbisá在一篇题为“言外、言外、言外”的文章中指出了为何言外会产生令人惊讶的效果：

"Perlocution has no upper border: any consequential effect of a speech act may be considered as perlocutionary. If breaking news surprises you so that you trip and fall, my announcement has not only been believed true by you (which is already a perlocutionary effect) and thus surprised you, but has also made you trip. fall, and (say) injure your ankle. This aspect of the so-called 'accordion effect' concerning actions and speech actions in particular (see Austin 1975: 110-115; Feinberg 1964) meets general consent, apart from those speech-act theorists who prefer to limit the notion of perlocutionary effect to intended perlocutionary effects...."

来源

• 分配，尼古拉斯。“语用学中的关键术语”，《连续体》，2011年。
• 盖伯，凯瑟琳。《反击：言论自由与仇恨言论之争》，约翰·本贾明斯，2002年。
• 《交流与参考》，沃尔特·德格吕特，1984年。
• 斯比莎，玛丽娜。《言语行为的语用学》中的“言语、言外之意、言外之意”，玛丽娜·斯比莎和肯·特纳主编。Walter de Gruyter，2013年。