SPEECH ACT IN “JOHN Q” MOVIE’S SCRIPT
A THESIS
Submitted to the English Department,
Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan, In Partial Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Sastra
By:
Vivien R. Banurea
Reg. No. 2102220016
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
A great thank and praise to Jesus Christ who loves and blesses her by giving health, strength, shelter, and knowledge which have been given to her for completing this thesis entitled “Speech Act in “John Q” Movie’s Script” as a partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra of English and Literature Department, Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan.
Besides Jesus Christ, my great Father who helps the writer for finishing and finding the solution for many difficulties and troubles this thesis, she realize that there are following people who have contributed to the making of this thesis. The writer would like to express her gratitude, appreciation, and special thanks to: Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si, as the Rector of State University of
Medan.
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M. Hum, as the Dean of Faculty of Language and Arts.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M. Pd. as the Head of English and Literature Departments.
Rika, S.Pd., M.Hum as the Secretary of English and Literature Department, Dra. Meisuri, MA as the Head of Applied Linguistics Program, Dra. Masitowarni siregar, M. Ed as the Head of English Education.
Prof. Dr. Lince Sihombing, M.Pd. as her Thesis Supervisor. Dr. Siti Aisah Ginting, M. Pd. as her Academic Consultant,. Drs. Elia Masa Gintings, M.Hum as the Examiner,
Immanuel Praasetya Gintings, S.S, M. Hum as the Notulen
For all lecturers, throughout the academic years at the State University of Medan who have shared their knowledge.
Great thank for My Family, especially her beloved parents, Jon S. Banurea and Imelda Simanjuntak who always support, pray, sacrifices, their endless love, giving spiritual, financial, and always patient to help her. The writer realize that without their love, she may never have overcome this amazing and long adventure. They always give advices to her in facing all complications happened in her life. Her beloved brothers, Yudi H. Banurea and Yakub H. Banurea and sister, Yessi R. Banurea for their supports, cares, prays and the ideas. They entertain me when I got stuck and stress because of this whole things.
Her beloved friends, especially Geng 3 Sweat Kurcaci or 3 kwek kwek, Yanti Joseva, Octhaviani, Sumarni Parapat. Thank you guys for the whole crazy thing we have done, for laughing and tears during college, the great group discussion and for the suggestion for each other.
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For Friends in Unit Kegiatan Mahasiswa Katolik (UK-KMK St. MARTINUS UNIMED) who makes her to be competent in organization, and help her during conducting the thesis.
Her housemates in boarding house, Kurnia Sihotang who help and support her during the completing the thesis. Thanks for her spirit, suggestion, advice, motivations and happiness.
For people who direct and indirect contributed in this thesis that cannot mention one by one, thanks for your kindness.
Finally, the writer would like to invite the readers to give suggestions and responses for the improvement of this thesis in the future because she admit that this thesis is still far from being complete and perfect.
Medan, Agustus 2014 The Writer,
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ABSTRACT
Banurea, Vivien R. 2102220016. Speech Acts in “John Q” Movie’s Script. A Thesis. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Medan.
This study deals with Speech Acts found in “John Q” movie’s Script. The objectives of this research were to find out the types of speech acts, they are: Declarations, Representatives, Expressives, Directives, and Commisives and the most dominantly type of speech acts used by the main character, namely John Q and to describe the implication of the most dominant type of speech act used by the main character in “John Q” movie’s script. This research was conducted by using descriptive qualitative design. The data were derived from “John Q” movie’s script by downloading the script from internet.
It took 360 utterances taken from the subtitle of “John Q” Movie. The result of analyzing found five types of process were used in “John Q” movie, they were: Declarations, Representatives, Expressives, Directives, and Commisives. There were 360 speech act in 360 utterances. The findings of data analysis showed that the total numbers of process from the five types of speech acts were: Declarations are 11 items (3,05%), Representatives are 112 items (31,11%), Expressives are 27 items (7,50%), directives is 187 items (51,94%) and Commisives is 23 (6,40%) utterances. It means that Directives is the most dominant type of speech acts used in “John Q” movie. Directives is generally used by the main character, John Q in “John Q” movie’s script because the main character intends to requesting, commanding, warning, permitting, urging, questioning, ordering, suggesting, advising, begging, challenging, insisting, and pleading when he face the problem and experienced the situation. This is shows that the main character is attempts to get the other characters to do something or action.
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CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 25
A. Research Design ... 25
B. The Data……….. ... 26
C. The Source of the Data ... 26
D. The Technique for Collecting Data ... 27
E. The Technique for Analyzing Data ... 27
CHAPTER IV. DATA ANALYSIS, FINDING AND DISCUSSION ... 29
A.The Data ... 29
B.The Data Analysis ... 29
C.Research Findings ... 41
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CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ... 45
A.Conclusion ... 45
B.Suggestion ... 46
REFERENCES ... 47
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LIST OF TABLE
Table Page
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendices Page
1. Appendix A ………...………50
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CHAPTER I
INTORDUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
When someone needs a help, requests, gives suggestions or comments for
something and so on, she/he must use a language. Therefore in daily life, a
language takes important parts to make the interaction to one another. For
example, when someone needs a help to bring a dictionary to him, he will say,
“Can you bring my dictionary?” This sentence is a language. Language is a form
of human speech. One of the functions of language is for communication. The
term is important for human to communicate, either spoken or written. As
Kreidler (1998:19) defines that a language is a system of symbols through which
people communicate. The symbols may be spoken, written, or signed with the
hand.
The speaker sometimes uses language in semantic and pragmatics form.
Semantics means the speaker says the words in literary meaning that connect to
thing while pragmatics means the sentences used more than saying the words, the
speaker needs the hearer to do things. For example, “This tea is too hot!” there
are two meaning, the speaker needs a cold tea or the tea is not too hot.
The way of human to speech in order to ask or say something to the hearer
to get to the point depends on the hearer’s understanding. The hearer needs to
know not only what the speaker says but also what he/she is talking about, why he
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Related to those explanation above, linguistics explain about aspects of
language in its use. In linguistics, there are many sub-fields that focus on a
structure-focused study of language. One of them is pragmatics. Pragmatics
studies how people comprehend to mean something and procedure a
communicative act or speech act in concrete speech situation, which is usually a
conversation and become the bridging the explanatory gap between sentences
meaning of the sentences, while the speaker is trying to convey.
People do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures
and words, they perform via those utterances. Yule (1998:47) states that actions
performed via utterances are generally called speech act. Speech act is a kind of
verbal communication. For example, the situation is in the office and a boss has a
great deal of power, then the boss’s utterance is “You’re fired!” this is more than
a statement but the utterance can be used to performed the act of ending the
employment.
Fromkin (2011:178) defines that speech acts as means of language people
use to do things such as lay, bets, issue warnings, or nominate candidates. In both
definitions, people can understand that studying the speech acts should pay
attention of different kinds of speech act apply to the speaker’s communicative
intention in producing an utterance. As Yule (1998:48) states that there are three
elements of the action performed by producing an utterance, there are a
locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts. These three elements
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In many times, people not only saying but also forcing hearer to do
something. When the hearer is doing an act it means that he or she is doing speech
act. The hearer tends to do action. McGowan in his journal A Partial Defense of
Illocutionary Silencing (2011: 133) in Austin demonstrates that, “in addition to
making true or false claims about the world, speech can constitute action.
promises, bets, and apologies are all actions that can be performed by saying
certain words under certain circumstances.” Those situation not only perform in
daily conversation but also reflected in literary works, for instance through movie.
Dialogue in movie is one of the ways in communication which consists a
written or spoken conversation between characters by two or more people.
Dialogue is communication doing by the collaboration of conversation so they can
speak each other. The usage of speech act also used in the movie because a movie
is actually a representation of the real conversation in naturally society.
Dialogue itself is the utterances and it is the application of language. With
language people can speak to one another. This is can be known in speech act
term. Speech act more focus on sense, it means that what make language work.
With speech acts language allow people to regulate and modify human reality
based on power of words. It means that people not only treats language as advice
for communication but also an instrument of action.
From the explanation above, the writer understand that speech act occur
not only in human’s daily life but also reflected in the movie. It is because of
movie has conversation, and certainly the sentences contains of pragmatics and in
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speech acts, especially in the movie and by doing this research, the writer will
help people to understand about speech act.
Here one of the example of utterance that uttered by the main character
and the utterance is belong to Directive type.
Example:
Situation : Home
Features : Mike, John Q
Mike : What are we going to do? You're not going to do something,
right, Dad? You know what I'd do? I'd get so big and mad, I'd just
go crazy and kick someone's butt.
John Q. : Watch your language.
For bold sentences above explained that language has an action. People
understand that sentence can be form of semantics or pragmatics meaning. In this
case, if it is semantic meaning the speaker’s utterance does not intend to get the
hearer to do something, but in pragmatics meaning, John Q’s utterance not only
saying the word or statement but also have meaning or purpose to hearer (Mike)
that is forced him to do something.
In speech act term, these utterance is categorized on directives type.
Directives means what the speaker use to get someone else to do something. They
express what the speaker wants. It can be uttered in a form of requesting,
commanding, warning, permitting, urging, questioning, suggesting, advising,
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commanding form because he command Mike, his son for saying something that
is polite.
Those paragraph above is one example that categorized in directives, and
there are four another kinds of speech act. Yule’s theory explained about five
types of speech act that is declarations are those kind of speech acts that change
the world via their utterance. Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that
state what speaker believes to be the case or not. Expressive are those kinds of
speech acts that states what the speaker feels. Directives are those kinds of speech
acts that speakers use to get someone else to do something. Commissives are
those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some future
action.
This condition makes the writer is interested in analyzing the speech act in
a movie because there will be a challenge to define what context of each sentence
that uttered by the main character and to understand more about the function of
pragmatics itself besides in a text, especially speech acts subject.
In this chance, the writer chooses “John Q” movie as the object of the
research. It is an interesting movie. Indeed, the purpose of the film was to
highlight many issues surrounding poor health care in the United States, and even
less empathy from hospital administration and insurance companies. This issues is
familiar for people even they are trapped by this poor condition and this also
happens among poor people in Indonesia.
This is about justice for every people to get the health care and it is about
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condition is not a new term for people but it is ordinary problems. This situation
happened not only in the develop nations but also in every developing nations
especially in Indonesia.
For this, the writer wants to study every utterances by the main character,
namely John Q. The writer believes that the main character’s utterances have
meaning or contains pragmatics especially for all of the kinds of speech act
because in the movie the main character works as a factory worker, besides he is
poor economic and the life is simple.
Besides analyzing every utterances based on Yule’s theory, she wants to
find out which is the dominantly used by the main character, namely John Q. This
is not just about how he solve it but this is more about the utterances when he
produce a language. After finding the dominantly type of speech act, she analyzed
what is the implication of the dominant type of speech acts used in “John Q”
move’s script.
B. The Problem of the Study
The problems of the study are formulated as the following:
1. What are the types of speech acts used by the main character, namely John
Q in “John Q” movie’s script?
2. What type of speech acts is dominantly used in “John Q” movie’s script?
3. What is the implication of the dominant types of speech acts used in “John
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C. The Objectives of the Study
Related to the problems of the study, the objectives of the study are:
1. to find out what are the types of speech acts used by the main character,
namely John Q in “John Q” movie’s script
2. to derive the most dominant type of speech acts that is used in “John Q”
movie’s script
3. to analyzed the implication of the dominant type of speech act which used
in “John Q” movie’s script.
D. The Scope of the Study
The scope of this study is limited to the main character’s utterances,
namely John Q in the “John Q” movie’s script. The writer discusses the five types
of speech acts based on Yule’s theory (1996:53), such as: declarations,
representatives, expressive, directives and commissives and to analyzed what is
the implication of the dominant type of speech act used in “John Q” movie’s
script
E. The Significance of the Study
The analysis of speech acts on “John Q” movie’s script is expected to be
success in determining the types of the speech act, the most dominant types of
speech act and the reason why the dominant type of speech acts occur in the
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Theoretically, the result of research can be a reference for the researcher or
those who plan to do the further researcher in the similar topic in linguistics field
especially on speech act and the reader who wants to increase their knowledge
about pragmatics, especially the application of speech acts in the movie.
Practically, the writer hopes that this study will be useful for the students
of English Department who are interested of analyzing the study or research using
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
This thesis deals with the speech act in “John Q” movie’s script. This
research is conducted by descriptive qualitative design, that is make description of
the situation and or event. After classifying and analyzing all the data the result
found that there are 360 utterances that uttered by the main character, namely
John Q.
It can be concluded that:
1. According to Yule’s theory there are five types of speech acts. From the
whole data, she classifying the five types and found that all types of
speech acts were used by the main character, namely John Q in “John Q”
movie’s script. There are 360 utterances consist of Declarations is 11
(3,05%) utterances, Representatives is 112 (31,11%) utterances,
Expressives is 27 (7,50%) utterances, Directives is 187 (51,94%)
utterances and Commisives is 23 (6,40%) utterances.
2. After classifying 360 utterances based on the five types of speech acts,
then she found the dominant type. From all types, Directives is the
dominantly used by the main character, namely John Q . It can be seen
from the total number of utterance that is 187 utterances or 51.94%.
3. The implication of Directives that is the dominantly type of speech acts
insisting, advising, warning. It means that John Q used requesting form
when he needs a help to the head of hospital, the police and the doctor for
saving Mike’s life. Using commanding form when he wanted his son on
the donor list and make an operation, using insisting hen he knew that
there is no option and way how to save his son. Using advising form when
he thought that he will not around with Mike again, he advices Mike to be
a god boy. Using warning form when he knew that the police and the head
of hospital was cheating him.
B. Suggestions
Referring to the conclusion above, the following are written as the
suggestion which useful for:
1. Students of English Department especially to Literature Student to learn
more about how Speech Acts used in a text, book and especially a dialogue
in the movie.
2. Other researcher who wants to make as reference for the further research
to analyze the five types of speech acts. This research can help the further
researcher to know and understand how the five types of speech acts used
in communication.
People who loves John Q movie. It is better for them to study or
understand the speech acts that used in the utterances, especially the main
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