Indirect threats as an illegal speech act

This article demonstrates how speech act theory and specifically the notion of felicity conditions can help elucidate the threatening aspects of other- wise vague and unspecific messages. Based on a discussion of language crimes, illegal speech acts and the question of intent, I propose a list of felicity conditions for threats that account for their primary purpose as at- tempts to intimidate a victim. Examples for discussion are taken from a data set of indirect, written threats extracted from verdicts by Danish higher courts. Contrary to previous claims, it is shown that it is not only possible but linguistically quite straightforward to analyze even indirectly phrased messages as instances of threats.