CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of the Study
Pragmatics is one of the main areas of linguistics study that look at the
knowledge we use both toextract meaning when we hear or read, and to convey
meaning when we speak or write. Pragmatics is a study of speaker meaning (Yule
1996:3). Pragmatics, as the branch of linguisticsis concerned with theuse of these
tools in meaningful communication. Pragmatics is about theinteraction of semantic
knowledge with our knowledge of the world,taking into account contexts of use,
Griffiths (2006:1). Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as
communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). This
study also involving the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context
and how the context influencing the things they said. In this case, the speaker must
be able to organize what they want to say in accordance with the people they are
talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances.
Speech acts is a part of pragmatics discussion which relates to a certain
sentence and utterance that has a certain acts within it. Speech acts is an utterance
that serves a function in communication. Speech acts are the part of our daily life
whether in spoken language or writing. By speaking a language, we will perform the
speech acts such as giving commands, making statements, asking questions or
making promises. In other words, we can do actions or things by using the speech.
In the most basic terms, speech acts involve the act of verbally stating something,
what one does while stating it, and what one hopes to accomplish by stating it. In
are performed are often important for decoding the whole utterance and its proper
meaning. There are various classifications of speech acts that include propositional,
illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.
In the pragmatic’s theory, there are three types of acts, namely: locutionary,
illocutionary, and perlocutionary act. These three types are called speech acts.
Locutionary act is performing the act of saying something. Illocutionary act is
performing the act in saying something. Perlocutionary is performing an act by
saying something. For the example, locutionary, s says to h that X; illocutionary, in
saying X, s asserts that p; perlocutionary, by saying X, s convinces h that P. Here, the
X is the certain words spoken with a certain sense and reference. Speech acts is the
centre of the pragmatics. Speech acts is the study of how to do things with words.
Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts (Yule 1996:47). In
an effort to express themselves, people do not only produce utterance that contains
grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterance.
Commonly, we know the types of utterance namely: requesting, ordering, begging,
inviting, offering, complaining, apologizing, promising, and the others.
Illocutionary act is an act that performed in saying something or in other
words, the illocutionary acts is the action that intended by the speakers or the writers.
The illocutionary acts is performed via the communicative force of an utterance
(Yule: 1996:48). There is an intention of the speaker or the writer in making that
utterance or sentence. Illocutionary acts are considered the core of the theory of
speech acts. As already explained above, the illocutionary act is an action that
performed by the speaker in producing a given utterance. The illocutionary act
requesting, giving commands, threatening for instance. Illocutionary acts also can be
found in the written form such as books, magazines, or in the literary works such as
play, novel, and short story.
Some linguists have attempted to classify illocutionary acts into a number of
categories or types. Leech (1983: 205) classifies illocutionary acts into four, they are:
assertive, directive, commissive, and expressive. Yule ( 1996: 48) categorizes the
illocutionary acts into five main categories, they are: declarations, representatives,
expressive, directives, and commissives. Searle (1979:13-23) categorizes them into
five main categories, they are:assertive, directives, commissives, expressive, and
declarations. The main five categories would show the intention or action of the
writer or the speaker for the reader. For example, in Discover Magazine April 2013
edition page 7,
(1) ‘So please take a minute to share your thoughts and suggestion by email’
The example above is the illocutionary act namely the directive type that meant for
begging or requesting the help from the reader to send their feedback through the
utterance above. As Yule (1996: 48) explains that directive types are the kind of
speech acts that speakers or writers use to get someone else to do something. This
type can be command, order, request, or suggestion. The example above is an
illocutionary act because there is an action namely the action of requesting,
performed by the utterance.
Another example, in Discover magazine April 2013 edition page 7,
(2) “Thankfully, as you pointed out, the medical community is dropping the
This is also the example of illocutionary type namely the expressive of thanking.
Yule (1996:48) explains that expressives are those kinds of speech that state what the
speaker feels. This type expresses the psychological state and can be statement of
pleasure, pain, likes, dislike, joy, or sorrow. The person above is stating his/her
feeling and he/she is thanking. The person above performs the thanking action by
using an utterance as stated above.
Discover Magazine is an American
articles about
in October 1980 by
than
like
interesting topics for the reader because many real fact shown from our daily
activities. Nowadays, this magazine already distributed worldwide. This magazine
provides more useful and popular scientific articles that are interesting to be read.
Not only science, technology, and the future also discussed on this magazine.
Discover Magazine April 2013 edition would be the object of this thesis because on
this edition, there are many topics about the natural environment and many solutions
for solving environment problems and also indirectly asked us to protect the natural
environment around us. This edition would be an interesting object because
environment is related to our daily life.
From this scientific articles can be found many illocutionary cases and would
be an interesting topic because the role of illocutionary acts would be shown through
the articles. Based on the explanations above, the Illocutionary acts found in
Magazine April 2013 edition become the object of this thesis because there are many
illocutionary acts happen in this magazine although it is a scientific magazine. By
using illocutionary, we could ask someone to do some action or we can express an
action just by using an utterance. Illocutionary become the most interesting topic
compared with locutionary and perlocutionary. Locutionary is just an ordinary act
without any certain action intended meanwhile the perlocutionary is an action of
asking someone to do something by using utterances or sentences. As we see,
Illocutionary act is the act that performed through utterances and it is completely
different with the locutionary and perlocutionary act. Illocutionary act become an
interesting topic to be analyzed because we may learn to perform many actions just
by using the utterances or sentences.
1.2Problems of The Study
The problem of the study is an important thing for the thesis in order that the
researcher will not get lost in discussing the main topic of the thesis. Based on the
background above, the problems of the study of this thesis are formed as bellow:
1. What types of illocutionary acts that are found in some selected Discover
Magazine’s articles?
2. What are the intentions of each illocutionary acts performed in some
selected Discover magazine’s articles?
3. What is the most dominant type of illocutionary acts found in some
1.3Objective of the study
The objective of this research is to improve the student’s knowledge about
the illocutionary acts. Discussing about illocutionary acts, there are many types of it.
As stated at the problems of the study above, below are the objectives of the study to
answer the problems of the analysis namely:
1. To find out the number and types of illocutionary acts in some selected
Discover Magazine’s articles.
2. To interpret the intention of each illocutionary acts found in some selected
Discover Magazine’s articles.
3. To determine the most dominant type of illocutionary acts in Discover
Magazine’s some selected articles.
1.4Scope of the Study
It is necessary to limit the analysis to avoid the vagueness since the object of
speech acts is too wide. The analysis would be limited only on the illocutionary acts.
There are only five types of illocutionary will be discussed on this thesis namely:
assertive, expressive, directives, declarative, and commissives. Therefore, the
illocutionary act types and the intention of utterance in Discover Magazine would be
the focus of this thesis. The Discover Magazine on April 2013 edition would be the
object of this thesis. This analysis would be valid only for the Discover Magazine on
April 2013 edition. The object of the analysis is limited only for five selected
articles. Through this scope of analysis, it will help the readers to figure out the
1.5Significance of the Study
From this study, this analysis hopefully gives contribution in developing the
linguistics studies especially about illocutionary acts. This study hopefully could give
a worth significances such as:
1. This study will help the students’ competence in understanding the
illocutionary acts.
2. To enlarge the reader’s knowledge about speech acts namely illocutionary
acts.
