a perlocution is what an utterance does

I never quite got into the kinds of illocutionary force I think Twain's n-word might be taken to have. The thing to do is, I imagine, to categorize the perlocutionary effects - the impacts the text has - and work back from them to theorize those illocutionary forces. For instance, some possible perlocutions would be:

• a generalized, non-specific, perhaps physical feeling of disgust
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the fictional speaker
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the "author of Huckleberry Finn"
• a feeling of disgust aimed at "Mark Twain"
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the vocalizer (if the book is read aloud)
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the teacher
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the school
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the American educational system in general
• a feeling of disgust aimed at white America
• a feeling of disgust aimed at the white America of some specific era
• any of the above, with disgust replaced with disappointment, delight, confusion, etc.
• a feeling of self-loathing
• and skipping over many other possible types of disgust...
• shame of any number of kinds
• a feeling of superiority of any number of kinds
• true indifference (which is perhaps not a perlocution at all, but is in any case rare)
• a sense of willful indifference
• shock
• curiosity
• anger
• a conscious argument regarding the moral meaning of the word's appearance
• a vocalized response, such as saying "I will not read another word of this!"
• a physical response, such as leaving the room or closing the book or leafing through the book

This is clearly wholly incomplete and perhaps skewed in one direction or another. But they all rather beg the question, What "made" the reader or hearer do this? The short answer is, the words. But this brings us to the heart of speech act theory's investigations - how do words do things? I would suggest the average unsophisticated reader (I won't bother at the moment to make claims for the sophisticated ones) is only capable of being impacted so powerfully because he feels he is in a lively, living conversation with somebody when he is reading. This somebody is surely not the actual historical person Samuel Clemens, but he may be part of it, as may his public persona, as may a more non-specific "author of Huck Finn," as may the teacher who assigned the book, the school that hired the teacher, the "system" that sets the school's rules, and so on and so on. The "author," whatever that is, clearly lives in the emotional life of the reader as he reads.

Once we have established that the reader is, or believes himself to be, in a conversation, we can look more systematically at the (already systematized) varieties of illocution and find out just what the reader might think the writer is trying to do (to him(?)).

This is not to attempt to undermine the logic of "the death of the author," or of historicist reconstructions of the author. I follow and generally approve of these arguments. It is an attempt instead to get at the reader's powerful, perhaps indelible sense of an author. Why do people idolize or abhor authors? When they idolize, abhor or have some more nuanced opinion, who or what is it that they have this opinion of?