384 David J. Armitage third class condition does not mean “future more probable”, although that may be within the range of things for which it is typically used. When a conditional clause (or indeed any other grammatical construction) is used in the context of a specific utterance, the author usually intends to communicate a particular idea (103). There may be other possible “meanings” in the combination of words used, but if a speaker ’s intent is ignored by those to whom they are speaking, their attempt at communication is liable to fail. In seeking to understand an epistle, it thus makes sense to consider what the writer was trying to achieve. This necessitates going beyond grammar, whilst allowing it to limit the possibilities. Speech Act Theory, which proposes a theoretical basis for how writers or speakers achieve things using words, provides a potential framework for exploring these issues (104). Speech Act Theory is based on the premise that when humans communicate with words, they use those words to do something (105). Many verbs can be described as “performative” in that, when spoken under the appropriate conditions, they bring about the effect that they describe (106). For example, if someone says “I rebuke you”, the rebuke is both described by the utterance and achieved through it. Utterances do not always include explicit performative verbs, but can nonetheless still function as “illocutionary acts” (that is, they convey a particular force) because the performative idea can be inferred by the hearer or reader. Thus the meaning of an utterance is more than its grammatical structure (107), and identical sentences can be used in utterances with entirely different illocutionary force, depending on the context (108). Searle argues that use of language is governed by conventions (109). For a particular speech act to achieve what the speaker intends, it needs to fulfil certain conditions (110), (sometimes described as “felicity conditions” (111)). As Schiffrin explains, these address what is predicated or referred to by the utterance (its propositional content), (103) Cf. K.J. VANHOOZER, Is there a Meaning in this Text? (Leicester 1998) 211: “Meaning is a matter of intending to convey a message to another person”. (104) See YOUNG, “Classification”, 48. (105) See COTTERELL – TURNER, Linguistics, 91. (106) J.S. PECCEI, Pragmatics (London 1999) 45. (107) YOUNG, “Classification”, 33. (108) J.R. SEARLE, Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge 1969) 24. (109) SEARLE, Speech Acts, 37. (110) SEARLE, Speech Acts, 54. (111) PECCEI, Pragmatics, 50.