Threatening Revisited

Abstract

This paper considers the act of verbal threatening. I first examine what constitutes a verbal threat, concluding that it involves conveying both the intention to perform an act that the addressee will view unfavourably and the intention to intimidate the addressee. I then compare threatening to promising and warning, and I examine the ways in which a speaker may issue a threat, given that one can never guarantee success in threatening. Finally, I look at the multitude of factors that must be considered if one is to conclude that a serious threat was made.