کتاب Linguistics For non Linguists (ویرایش 4)

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A LOCUTIONARY act can be either literal or nonliteral, depending upon whether the speaker actually means what is said or not. Consider, for example, the warning on a pack of cigarettes, which reads Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health. The warning means exactly what it says; thus, it constitutes a literal locution act. On the other hand, consider an antismoking poster that depicts a bleary-eyed, disheveled man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth; the caption reads smoking is glamorous. The caption constitutes a nonliteral locution act.

Nonliteral locution acts are those for which a literal interpretation is either impossible or absurd within the context of the utterance. For example, the famished husband who walks through the door and says to his wife, I could eat a horse ( instead of, say, I am very hungry ) is performing a nonliteral locution act. The locution is nonliteral because most human beings could not ( and certainly would not ) eat an entire horse.