46 Volume-I, Issue-III October 2015 IRJHSS International Research Journal of Humanities & Social Science A Peer-Reviewed Bi-lingual l Journal Volume-I, Issue- III, October 2015, Page No. 46-53 Language: English & Bengali Published by Scholar Publications, Karimganj, Assam, India, 788711 Website: http://www.irjhss.com The Differences between Threat and Promise Acts Samar Sami Al-Nsor University, Department of English, Baghdad, Iraq Abstract It is clear that threat and promise share some similarities due to the classification of commissive speech act that both acts belong to. This article tries to differentiate between the act of threat and promise. Starting from a general definition of the two acts based on the concepts of speech act and social commitment. After showing that they share same formal types, it comes up with the main conclusion that the different between promise and threat depends on the beneficial scale and the intention of the speaker. Keywords: threat, promise, speech act 1. Introduction Language is a system of conversation that helps us to communicate with one another. Language is full of many kinds of conventions that govern what we called speech acts. The field of speech acts theory is one of the interesting topics concerned with the ways words can be used not only to present information, but also to carry out actions. Most speech acts can be distinguished easily through the usage of performative verbs that indicate the act (request, apology, warning …etc). Thus, some of these performative acts can be used to indicate other acts as the two acts under research, threat and promise. In this paper the concepts of promises and threats are studied in order to gain some insight on their nature, their relations and their usage and to reach to the aim of studying their condition of use. This analysis serves also to investigate related concepts. 2. Promise as Speech Act In general, promise is a speech act that committed the speaker to do a future action under pre- condition that is wanted by the hearer. According to Searle (1969: 63) promise act is '' an utterance predicates some future act of the speaker counts as the undertaking of an obligation to do the action". Hence, a promise act is more than a declaration of intention to do or not to do some future action; instead, it is a commitment to hearer that the act will occur. When someone performs a promise act, s/he makes several assumptions: firstly, the act that will be done by the speaker is for the hearer's benefit. Secondly, the act of promise is something that will be done; that‟s mean the act of promise is meant to remove the doubt. Thirdly, assumes that the speaker will do the act if the hearer wants it, that is, usually what is promised is requested by the hearer (Mulholland, 2002: n.p). Searle (1979: 22) classifies promise as Commissives speech act. This class reflects the commitment of speaker to some future action (e.g. promise, vow and pledge). The structure of 2395-3942 (Online) 2454-1621 (Print)