An Exploration of Conditional Clause Exegesis 385 various elements of background knowledge that the speaker and hearer need to have (“preparatory conditions”), the psychological state of the speaker (“sincerity condition”), and what the point of the utterance is (“essential condition”) (112). Searle proposes felicity conditions for various illocutionary acts (113). For example he notes that warnings are constrained in regard to propositional content in that they must refer to some future state. Regarding preparatory conditions, the speaker must have reason to think an event is approaching that is unfavourable for the hearer. For a warning to be authentic, the speaker must genuinely believe that the event referred to will harm the hearer (sincerity condition). Finally, the essential condition is that the statement “counts as an undertaking to the effect that [the event] is not in [the hearer’s] best interests” (114). In human communication speakers often leave things to be inferred by their hearers; thus the felicity conditions for a particular illocutionary act may sometimes not be explicitly fulfilled. Nevertheless the illocutionary force can still be communicated by questioning or stating one or more of the appropriate felicity conditions (115). Thus a warning can be communicated by questioning the relevant preparatory condition: “Will that be good for you?” In an appropriate context this will be understood as more than a request for information. Alternatively the sincerity condition could simply be stated: “I do not believe that will be good for you”. Neither of these formulations contains the performative verb “warn”, yet both can function as warnings. They are thus indirect speech acts. Since illocutionary acts can be indirect a single utterance can be multifunctional; it is often possible to discern more than one illocutionary force in a particular utterance. This partly reflects the difficulty of classifying illocutionary acts, for which categories could be multiplied ad nauseam. Searle has suggested that there are five major categories (116), and within these categories illocutionary acts share crucial elements of their felicity conditions. However utterances (112) D. SCHIFFRIN, Approaches to Discourse (Oxford 1994) 56. (113) SEARLE, Speech Acts, 66-67. (114) SEARLE, Speech Acts, 67. (115) YOUNG, “Classification”, 39; PECCEI, Pragmatics, 55. (116) Noted in SCHIFFRIN, Discourse, 57. The five categories are: Representatives, Directives, Commissives, Expressives, Declarations. (See also VANHOOZER, Meaning, 209.)