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c. You're standing in front of the TV.
d. You'd make a better door than a window.
One of the most common types of indirect speech act in English, as shown in [23], has the
form of an interrogative, but is not typically used to ask a question (i. e. we don't expect
only an answer, we expect action). The examples in [23] are normally understood as
requests.
[23] a. Could you pass the salt?
b. Would you open this?
Indeed, there is a typical pattern in English whereby asking a question about the hearer's
assumed ability ('Can you?', 'Could you?') or future likelihood with regard to doing
something ('Will you?', 'Would you?') normally counts as a request to actually do that
something.
Indirect speech acts are generally associated with greater politeness in English than direct
speech acts. In order to under-stand why, we have to look at a bigger picture than just a
single utterance performing a single speech act.

Expressed and Implied Locutionary Acts

The locutionary act is concerned with the propositional content of the utterance,
which is what follows the performative verb in an explicit parformative and the entire
utterance in a nonexplicit performative. In the following example, the propositional content
is in italics.
a. Explicit: I promise I’ll write the report tomorrow.
b. Nonexplicit: I’ll write the report tomorrow.
The propositional content of a locutionary act can be either expressed directly or
implied via implicature. The propositional content is expressed if the utterance actually
contains an expression of the propositional content condition for the illocutionary act
involved. For example, consider a warning, which is a type of directive. The propositional
content condition on all directives is to predicate a future act of the hearer. Thus a warning
such as I warn you to stop doing this constitutes an expressed locutionary act because its
propositional content predicates a future act of the hearer.
On the other hand, the propositional content is implied if the utterance does not
contain an expression of the propositional content condition for the illocutionary act
involved. For example, the utterance I warn you that your actions are unreasonable
constitutes an implied locutionary act (reconsider your actions) because its propositional
content does not predicate a future act of the hearer; instead it predicates a quality of the
hearer.
Some types of illocutionary acts don’t have any specific propositional content
conditions. Questions can have any proposition as their propositional content. Therefore, a
common method for implying a locution is for the speaker to express a pre-condition for the
proposition of interest. For example Do you have a watch? Expresses a pre-condition for
having the time.
The same utterance may contain an implied locution on one occasion but an
expressed locution on another. For example, if you ask your friend Do you have a watch?
In order to help you decide what to get him/her for the birthday party, then the proposition
of interest is expressed by the utterance. However, if the same utterance is used to ask the
time, the proposition of interest is only implied by the utterance.