As two important speech acts, “promise” and “command” are both parallel to such speech acts as “interrogation” and “statement”, and are opposite to each other as speech acts: “the speech act of promise” meaning “the act of offering” while “the speech act of command” referring to “the act of taking”. However, “the speech act of conditional threat” in “the speech act of promise” can play the role of “giving command” in an indirect way to fulfill an attempt of “giving command”, thus an indirect command.

the speech act of promise; the speech act of command; the speech act of conditional threat; indirect command