locution
/ləˈkjuːʃ(ə)n
/noun
1A word or phrase, especially with regard to style or idiom.These locutions are determinedly descriptive....
- His earliest plays were political, ridiculing the wooden locutions of communist rhetoric.
- Today, any state-sponsored eugenic ideology would surely face considerable opposition, but instead we have (to use the barbarous locution now common) ‘privatized’ eugenic decisions.
1.1 [mass noun] A person’s style of speech: his impeccable locution...
- Like the protagonists in the classic Hollywood films of Anthony Mann, Hawks or Ford, the leads of Collateral express themselves through their action as much as their locution.
2An utterance regarded in terms of its intrinsic meaning or reference, as distinct from its function or purpose in context. Compare with illocution, perlocution.For our paraphrastic procedure to be comprehensive, it must work with contexts containing explicitly comparative locutions....
- The surface grammar of power locutions can be misleading in numerous ways.
- The central claim of the prosentential theory is that ‘x is true’ functions as a prosentence-forming operator rather than a property-ascribing locution.
Derivatives
locutionary
- Austin distinguishes among three components in a total speech act: the locutionary act, the illocutionary act, and the perlocutionary act.
- The paternalistic tradition thus constructs a simulacrum of male discursive empowerment which multiplies locutionary authority while eradicating perlocutionary agency.
- In this article we analyze the grammar of codes of ethics as a written locutionary act, and attempt to determine their implicit illocutionary and perlocutionary values.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin locutio(n-), from loqui 'speak'.