Indirect threats as an illegal speech act

Abstract

This article demonstrates how speech act theory and speci fi cally the notion of felicity conditions can help elucidate the threatening aspects of otherwise vague and unspeci fi c messages. Based on a discussion of language crimes, illegal speech acts and the question of intent, I propose a list of felicity conditions for threats that account for their primary purpose as attempts to intimidate a victim. Examples for discussion are taken from a data set of indirect, written threats extracted from verdicts by Danish higher courts. Contrary to previous claims, it is shown that it is not only possible but linguistically quite straightforward to analyze even indirectly phrased messages as instances of threats.