I GUSTI BAGUS ARISTRA VAUNDRA 1201305091
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LETTERS AND CULTURE
UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
Almighty God for the love and blessing during the process of writing this study. It
is a partial fulfillment of requirements for obtaining the Scholar degree of the
English Department, Faculty of Letters and Culture, Udayana University.
My sincere gratitude goes to Dr. I Made Netra, S.S., M.Hum., my first
supervisor, as well as to Sang Ayu Isnu Maharani, S.S., M.Hum., my second
supervisor , for all of the patience, guidance and advice in accomplishing this
writing. In addition, my gratitude is also addressed to Prof. Dr. Ni Luh Sutjiati
Beratha, M.A., as the Dean of Faculty of Letters and Culture, Udayana University;
Dr. Ni Luh Mas Indrawati, M.A., as Head of English Department; all lectures of
English Department , from when I have learned much.
Moreover, I thank the librarians of Faculty of Letters and Culture,
Udayana University for having lent me some literatures/references on the subject
related to the topic of this study.
My great appreciation also goes to my family, especially to my parents for
their support, love, understanding and finance since the very beginning of my
study. They have many helped me in many ways during the preparation up to the
Denpasar, December 30 2015
Alex’s dialogue in Movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”. The purposes of this study are to identify the intended meanings of directive of illocutionary acts are found in the movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wantedand to explain
the context of situation that supports the directive of illocutionary acts on Alex’s
dialogue in movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.The data of this study were taken from an animated movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.
ABSTRACT ... ii
TABLE OF CONTENT ... iv
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ... 1
1.1Background of the Study ... 1
1.2Problems of the Study ... 4
1.3Aims of the Study... 4
1.4Scope of Discussion ... 4
1.5Research Method ... 5
1.5.1 Data Source ... 5
1.5.2 Method and Technique of Collecting Data ... 6
1.5.3 Method and Technique of Analyzing Data ... 6
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURES, CONCEPTS, AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 8
2.1Review of Literature ... 9
2.2Concepts ... 14
2.2.1 Speech Act ... 14
2.2.2 Illocutionary Acts as a Part of Speech Act... 16
2.2.3 Directive Illocutionary Act ... 18
2.2.4 Context of Situation ... 18
CHAPTER III: DIRECTIVE ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
PERFORMED ON ALEX’S DIALOGUE IN MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE
MOST WANTED... 26
3.1 The Implicit Meaning ofDirective Illocutionary Act ... 26
3.2 Context of Situation ... 41
CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION ... 53
4.1 Conclusion ... 53
4.2 Suggestion ... 54
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Speech act is a kind of verbal communication and it is a subdivision of
pragmatics. People prefer do more things with words to conveying the information
only. People might be performing more acts at once when they are uttering
something. In other words, there are more than one meanings or force in their
utterance. So, the communication is not only about language but also with action.
Speech act is the utterance that occurs and act refers to an action. That is the reason
why people have to interpret the meaning of communication or language through
speech acts. We always perform speech act in our daily life. Sometimes we don’t
realize that the utterances we produce consist of speech act. We often use utterances
with indirect meaning. Speech act occurs on the process of the meaning in how the
communication occurs and how the listener perceives the aim. In many times, people
not only saying but also forcing the hearer to do something. When the hearer is doing
an act, it means that he or she is doing illocutionary act.
Generally the acts performed in the utterance of a sentence are the function of
the meaning of the sentence. However the intention is recognized partly on the basis
of what is said, only partly. That is why speech acts used to express meaning, a
phrase that express esintent. Speech act, then not only used to designate something,
what the speaker meant. Those kinds of actions performed through utterance are
generally refers to the three kinds of acts performed simultaneously. Austin
distinguishes speech act analysis into three parts: Locution, Ilocutions, and
Perlocutions.
Locutionary acts are the acts of saying something, provides the hearer with the
core information from which to infer the speaker’s illocutionary (communicative)
intent or recognizing that the speaker has uttered and identified sentence from the
language with an identified prosody. The idea of an “illocutionary act” can be
captured by emphasizing that “by saying something, we do something”. Meanwhile a
perlocutionary act is a speech act, as viewed at the level of its psychological
consequences, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or
otherwise getting someone to do or realize something.
Movie is one media that reflects the social life of human. Movie (also known
as film) is a motion picture with series of images which are constructed of multiple
individual shots joined to another in an extended sequence. One of the important
aspect mostly occurred in movie is the dialogue (conversation) among the characters.
The characters speak each other and there will be illocutionary act.
Utterances can be found on dialogue in movie. In analyzing illocutionary act,
the writer chose data from the main character’s utterances in that movie. The
utterances produced by Alex as the main character are the appropriate sources for the
writer in analyzing illocutionary act in order to look for the implicit meaning of each
Illocutionary act has some different types. The classifications of illocutionary
speech act as five subdivisions. They are: representatives, directives, commissives,
expressive, and declaratives. Each type has different context and meaning. However,
this study only concerned with those five illocutionary acts among those categories of
speech acts, and the focus of this study were the implicit meaning of directive of
illocutionary acts that occurred on Alex’s dialogue in movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s
Most Wanted and the context of situation that supports the types of illocutionary acts
used in the movie.
This study involves an exciting analysis enabling to describe the implicit
meaning of the illocutionary acts performed by the speakers through their utterances.
The analysis is also connected with the illustration of the existing contexts of
situation underlying the emergence of those utterances in a particular kind of
circumstance.
In speech acts the simplest cases of meaning are those in which the speaker
utter a sentence and mean it exactly and literally as what he says. But, on the other
hand, not all cases of meaning as simple as that. In such cases, however, the speaker
can say something and mean it, but additionally mean something else. This
complexity of the act performing illocutionary act make the hearer cannot understand
the meaning of the utterance well. Therefore, illocutionary act was chosen as the topic
in this study because the complexity of the meaning utterance utter by the speaker
was interesting to be discussed especially in a movie and this movie is very famous in
almost flawless. The animated is also a thing of wonder and the language in the
movie is not very hard to be understood by society.
1.2Problems of the Study
Referring to the language phenomenon “Directive Illocutionary Acts
Performed on Alex’s dialogue in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” there are
several interesting problems to study. They can be stated as follows:
1. What are the implicit meanings ofdirective of illocutionary acts are used on
Alex’s dialogue inMadagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted?
2. What are context of situationsthat support the directive of illocutionary acts on
Alex’s dialogue inMadagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted?
1.3Aims of the Study
Regarding to the problem above, especially the study was aimed at:
1. To identify the implicit meanings of directive of illocutionary acts are found
in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.
2. To explain the context of situation that supports the directive of illocutionary
acts on Alex’s dialogue inMadagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.
1.4Scope of Discussion
The discussion of this study is focused on the topic of illocutionary acts as
according to the objectives the study focuses on the identification of directive of
illocutionary acts which are found on Alex’s dialogue in movie Madagascar 3:
Europe’s Most Wanted and analysis ofthe context of situation that supports the type
of illocutionary acts.
1.5Research Method
Methodology is the set of methods that are used as the steps in doing the
scientific writing in obtaining the data. The research method can be divided into
three. They are (1) data source, (2) method and technique of collecting data, (3)
method and technique of analyzing data. This study was conducted by using
descriptive qualitative design which consist of watching the movie and read the
movie script of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. The descriptive qualitative
design doesn’t intend to find a new theory but to find a new evidence to prove the
theory. According to Creswell (2001:20), qualitative research is descriptive in that the
researcher is interested in process, meaning and understanding gained through words
or picture.
1.5.1Data Source
The data of this study were taken from an animated movie Madagascar 3:
Europe’s Most Wanted. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is a 2012
American 3D computer-animated comedy film, produced by DreamWorks
the Madagascar series, a sequel to Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and it is the
first in the series to be released in 3D. The film is directed by Eric Darnell, Tom
McGrath and Conrad Vernon. Its world premiere was held at the 2012 Cannes
Film Festival on May 18, 2012. The film was released on June 8, 2012, to critical
and commercial success; it is the best-reviewed film in the series. It was taken as
data source because it contains many utterances indicating those types of
illocutionary acts performed exclusively in some pieces of its dialogue.
1.5.2Method and Techniques of Collecting Data
The data was taken by observing the movie. All the dialogues as data related
to illocutionary acts were noted down and classified based on type of
illocutionary acts by Searle (1969). Next, the data which had grouped and
bold-typing has further classified into the types of illocutionary acts by Searle, weather
the data is classified into directives.
1.5.3Method and Techniques of Analyzing Data
The data is analyzed by using two main theories, the speech illocutionary act
theory by John R. Searle (1969) and the context of situation by Halliday (1989).
The illocutionary acts theory used for recognizing assertive, directives,
commissives, expressive, and declaratives. Meanwhile, the concept of Halliday
(1989), is used to know how the influence of context situation when the
The first is to classify the type of illocutionary acts into directives illocutionary
acts and the reason why they were grouped as one of the types of illocutionary
acts proposed by John R. Searle (1969).
The next step is toanalyze the context of situation that supports the directive of
illocutionary acts on Alex’s Dialogue in movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most
Wanted based on the theory of context of situation proposed by Halliday (1989).
By using this theory, we could determine the implicit meaning of the illocutionary
acts and we know what the function of those illocutionary acts that occurs in the
movie. Those applied theories functioned to show how certain utterances
indicating to directive illocutionary acts were performed and constructed through
pieces of dialogue inside in movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. It can
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURES, CONCEPTS, AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A literary review is an account of what has been published on a topic by
accredited scholars and researchers. Literature reviews in this research were divided
into two types, they were thesis review. In this chapter, all of the theories and
concepts that relevant to be analysis of the data were clearly described. They were
inserted in the subchapters, entitled review of literature, concepts and theoretical
framework.
The first subchapter, some studies on utterances that already done by previous
students of the English Department which give contribute for this study are briefly
discussed.
The second subchapters is a theory based on understanding emerging within
the concepts of speech acts, and illocutionary acts such as assertive, directives,
commissives, expressive, declarations.
The third subchapter covers all of the theories that used in analyzing data. It
refers to any theories proposed by linguists as the basic sources to tackle with the
analysis of the as assertive, directives, commissives, expressive, declarations
illocutionary acts and also the context of situation that supports the type of
illocutionary acts. They were framed in a systematic explanation, known as
2.1 Review of Literature
This subchapter discusses the review of the undergraduate thesis. The
explanation is described clearly about the explanation of previous studies related to
the topic in this study. Those have been done by the students of English Department
as their undergraduate thesis.
Nurani (2006) in her thesis entitled “Speech Act Component in the Movie
“The Proposal” the scope of discussion the topic is wide enough, her study described
speech act component such as locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. Besides,
her study mentions the context situation in the movie. Her study applies qualitative
method. The similarities between her study and this study could be seen from: the
object to be discussed which was from movie. Actually, here the data was taken from
a movie Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. After finding the similarities, there
were also differences among our studies. The difference her study with this study is
her study analyzes speech act components, the topic is wide enough to analyze.
Therefore, the data in this study were presented in the form directive sentence. The
writer didn’t explain about the context of situation that supports the illocutionary
utterances. Her study used the differences theory to support the analysis of the
problem about the context of situation of illocutionary acts was the theory
Ethnography of Communication proposed by Hymes (1972), whereas this study used
the theory of context situation by Halliday and Hassan. Her study also has the
weakness; the weakness of her study is in the explanation of context situation, Nurani
The result is her study showed many examples of speech act component and context
of situation influence the speaker’s utterance and the action made by the hearer.
A relevant study is conducted by Ayu Dewijayanti (2010) entitled “Direct and
Indirect Illocutionary Act used in The Duchess Movie”. The writer explained about
two kinds of illocutionary acts. It is about the use of direct and indirect illocutionary
acts in The Duchess movie. Her study applies qualitative method. In order to achieve
the aims of the study, there are some theories such as the theory of Searle is applied
to identify the utterance or expression used by the characters in the movie, then
categorizing whether it is indirect or direct illocutionary act. The similarities between
her study and this study conducted by Ayu Dewijayanti can be seen from the object,
it is same used the object was taken from movie. However, there are also some
differences including the use of the combination of the theory in analyzing the source
and the source itself. The difference is also seen from the focus of the study. While
the study conducted by Ayu Dewijayanti focused only on the direct and indirect
illocutionary acts and this study focuses on type of illocutionary acts. Jayanti’s thesis
uses the theory proposed by Malinowski to analyze the problems about influence the
context of situation to the response of the hearer, but this study used the theory
according to Halliday to analyze about the context of situation which influence the
language used. The weakness of her study is not exploring the types of illocutionary
acts since it is important in order to understand the topic and her study only analyzed
the hearer’s responses and then matched them based on the theory of context
which are spoken by the characters in her data source based on the theory of context
situation, not only the hearer response. Her study gives some contribution to this
study, such as in the area of theory and also a view about how to make analysis of
this study.
A relevant thesis discussing about illocutionary act entitled “Illocutionary
Acts in Sense and Sensibility Movie Screenplay” by Arya Waharika (2010) analyzed
about the type of illocutionary acts found in movie screenplay as well found,
analyzed the function and explication meaning as well his found. Like the others two
undergraduate thesis been reviewed, Arya Waharika also used the theory of context
situation to support the type of illocutionary acts proposed by Hymes (1972) and his
study applies qualitative method. The relevance of his study could be seen from the
similarities and the differences between this study and his study. The similarity was
had the same topic with her study is about illocutionary acts. The differences of both
of the studies was his study focuses on the function and the explication meaning of
illocutionary acts in Sense and Sensibility, whereas this study is focuses on the type
of illocutionary acts and the context of situation that support the illocutionary
utterance. The other differences, his study was taken from screenplay movie,
although the object this study was taken from animated comedy film. Generally, his
study could be considered as good enough in terms of the overall result of his
research and analysis as well. But on the other hand, the weakness was also found in
his study, Arya Waharika did the analysis which the other studies actually use, for
result is his study showed among four functions of illocutionary acts that are found in
the movie, several function of each type of the illocutionary acts were found, and the
explication of the meaning of illocutionary acts is done by using semantic primitives.
Arya Waharika makes good analysis and data preventatives. It was very clear.
Because it is easily can be understood even to a new learner of speech act for it
contain a good classification with clear explanation, which are the type of
illocutionary acts.
In comparing those three undergraduate thesis with this study, it could be
concluded that all of these thesis were related one to another since the topic was about
illocutionary acts, but the differences could be seen from the problem of this study
which were about the intended meaning of each type of illocutionary acts and what is
the context of situation that support type of illocutionary acts, whereas those three
thesis explained about the kinds of illocutionary acts and its function. Bach and
Harnish’s theory also Hymes’ theory were used in those three undergraduate thesis,
whereas John Searle’s theory and Halliday’s theory were used in analyzing this study.
However, it was clear that this study had something more than those three studies.
Speech act especially illocutionary acts as a part of it is such an interesting
topic to be discussed. It is showed by several scholars from all over the world who
had done some research about this topic. One of them is the international journal’s
article related to this study entitled “Facebook Status Updates: A Speech Act
Analysis” by Sanna Illyas and Damar Kushi (2012). This article was taken from
from Searle in the field of Speech Act. She criticizes about facebook status updates,
their study aimed at exploring the communicative functions of status updates on
Facebook. Moreover, how identities were established and represented through
language was also examined. For this purpose the status updates were analyzed
through Searle’s Speech Act framework. Their study is applies quantitative method
with a total of 171 status updates were collected for 5 consecutive days and then the
data were categorized according to the devised coding. The result is their study
showed that various socialization patterns emerge through the sharing of feelings,
information and ideas.
International journal’s article entitled “Offering as a Comissive and Directive
Speech Act: Consequence for Cross-Cultural Communication” by Ad-Darraji, Foo,
Ismail, and Abdullah (2012), this article was taken from “International Journal of
Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 3”, all of the writers are the
researchers from the School of Languages, Literacies and Translations, Universiti
Sains Malaysia and English Department at Tikrit University. This study is to
investigates the art of offer from different perspectives by examining the speech Act
theory perform on offer as one of the speech acts which can be subsumed under two
categories namely commissive and directives. It also focuses on the speech act of
offering from philosophical, social, and cultural views. The study attempted to
provide a detailed analysis of the speech act of offering grounded on the Theory of
Speech Acts introduced by introduced by Austin’s (1962) and Searle (1969) to
The result is his study recommends that speech acts in general and the act of “offer”
in particular should be validated in cross-cultural contexts.
2.2 Concepts
Concept consists of some certain theories that related to support that making
of research paper. There were two concepts that having relevancy to the topic of this
data study, such as the concept of speech act, and the concept of illocutionary acts as
a part of speech act.
2.2.1 Speech Act
Speech act field of study was firstly introduced by Austin who well known as
an Oxford Philosopher but then J.R. Searle took it further. Not only them, there
were also some other linguists who took a part in explaining thus study.
Austin (1962) conveys that “Speech act is the act of making an utterance in
which the speaker is performing a certain kind of acts, such as; giving advice,
asking question, making promises, making offers, etc. Those kinds of acts are
known as speech acts.”
John L. Austin is the first linguist proposed three types of act that are
simultaneously performed by a speaker, those are:
a. Locutionary Act
The utterance of a sentence with determined sense and reference, e.g.: S says
in certain construction, and with certain sense and reference. Therefore it could be
concluded that the components of illocutionary act were including phonetic
(phonology), phatic (syntactic) and rhetic (meaningful).
b. Illocutionary Act
The utterance which had certain or convention force (performing act in saying
something, e.g. in saying X, S asserts that P (Preposition)). Illocutionary act could
also define as what speaker S does in uttering U to hearer H in context C. The
speaker might perform an act or making a statement or promise, issuing a
command or request, asking a question, etc.
c. Perlocutionary Act
What S brings about or archives by saying something (performing an act by
saying something. By saying X, S convinces H that P). For example getting
someone to believe that something, moving someone to anger, consoling someone
in his distress, etc. In other words, when S causes an effect on H by means of
uttering U, it could be said that S has performed a perlocutionary act.
There was a series of analytical connection appeared in the notion of speech
act itself, such as what the speaker means, what the sentences (or other linguistic
element) uttered means, what the speaker intends, what the hearer understands,
and what the rules governing the linguistic elements are. According Searle’s
theory speech act is a minimal functional unit in human communication.
According to Austin and Searle, when a speaker says something, he does
when we offer an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment,
or refusal. A speech act might contain just one word or several words or
sentences. Speech acts include real life interactions and are requiringnot only
knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language within a
given culture. In other words it means that the hearer was expected to recognize
what the speaker communicative intention and the circumstances surrounding the
utterance were usually help both the speaker and the hearer in the process to
understand each other.
2.2.2 Illocutionary Acts as a Part of Speech Acts
Austin (1962) defines that a speech act consists of (i) locutionary act, (ii)
illocutionary act and (iii) perlocutionary act. Of the above mentioned acts, speech
act theory tended to concentrate largely on illocutionary acts.
As has been defined before, Yule also defined illocutionary acts were an
utterance with some kind of function in mind. It is performed via the
communicative force of an utterance.
Searle (1981) stated that Illocutionary acts occur in which the speaker utters a
sentence, means what he says, but also means something more. For example the
speaker may utter a sentence “I want you to close it” by way of requesting the
hearer to do something. However that was a request made by way of making a
Illocutionary act, defined by Austin as the act performed in saying something,
brings about a happening that can only be carried out by words. In other words, it
represented his point of view about what one does in saying something. When we
introduced context theories to the field of discourse analysis, we must take into
consideration not only the discourse itself, but also the context in which the
discourse takes place.
According to Searle, many utterance are equivalent to actions. As a speaker
produces an utterance, she or he is alsoperforming a certain kind of acts such as
giving order, asking question, making request, making a promise, etc. He further
clarified the work begun by Austin and redefined Austin’s illocution, or
illocutionary acts. He proposed speech act categories including the following:
a. Assertives – Statements that convey a belief or disbelief in some
proposition, such as an assertion.
b. Directives – Attempts to influence the listeners to something, such as a
demand or command.
c. Commissives – Commitments of self to some future course of action, such
as vow, promise, or swear.
d. Expressives – Expressions of a psychological state, such as thank,
apologize, or deplore.
e. Declaratives – Statements of fact that presume to alter a state of affairs,
2.2.3 Directive Illocutionary Act
According to Searle (1979:13), the illocutionary point of these consists in the
fact they are attempts (of varying degrees, and hence, more precisely, they are
determinates of the determinable which includes attempting) by the speaker to get
the hearer to do something
2.2.4 Context of Situation
Halliday (1985) stated that all use of language has a context situation. An
utterance which was uttered in a different context of situation could be interpreted
differently. He also state “A context of situation consists of three elements namely
field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. Field of discourse
refers to the ongoing activity. We may say field is the linguistic reflection of the
purposive role of language user in the situation in which a text has occurred.
Tenor refers to the kinds of social relationship enacted in or by the discourse. The
notion of tenor, therefore, highlights the way in which linguistic choices are
affected not just by the topic or subject of communication but also by the kind of
social relationship within, which communication is taking place. Mode is the
linguistic reflection of the relationship the language user has to medium of
transmission. The principal distinction within mode is between those channels of
communication that entail immediate contact and those that allow for deferred
contact between participants. In other words, field refers to what is happening to
other aspects related to them such as statues, roles, occupation, and etc.
Meanwhile, mode is associated with how the conversation happens.
2.2.5 Dialogue
Based on the theory of communication from Wilbur Schramm,
Communication is something people do. There is no meaning in a message except
what people put into it. To understand human communication process, one must
understand how people relate to each other. Added to the model the context of the
relationship, and how that relationship will affect. Included the social
environment in the model, noting that it will influence the frame of reference of
participants.
To change a situation or environment or constructively deal with any issue,
there first needs to be dialogue. Dialogue is a communication tool that allows
people to understand other viewpoints without pitting themselves against different
perspectives. In dialogue, there is no defending of opinions, and no counterpoints.
When individuals or groups have different perspectives and see issues differently,
dialogue can be employed as an effective communication tool to help the parties
understand each other's point of view. Dialogue brings people together who
would not naturally sit down together and talk about important issues. It is a
process to successfully relate to people who are different from you. Their
differences can include gender, religion, work departments, cultures, ethnicity,
2.3 Theoretical Framework
In theoretical framework, the selected theories that used to analyze the data of
the study were presented in more detail. This subchapter was divided into two; they
were the classification of illocutionary acts and the theory of context situation. The
main theory providing the classification of illocutionary acts was based on The
Taxonomy of Elementary Illocutionary Acts by J.R. Searle. Meanwhile, Halliday’s
theory of context of situation (1989) was used to cope with the analysis of this study.
The theory of speech act would interact with the theory of context of situation since
illocutionary acts was a part of speech acts. When the speaker uttered something to
the hearer, the utterance would be decided whether it belonged to one of the kinds of
the kinds of illocutionary acts based on Searle’s theory of illocutionary acts. If the
utterance belonged to the illocutionary acts, there must be an intended meaning that
the speaker wanted the hearer to understand. To find what exactly intended meaning
was, the theory of context of situation was needed, because it was impossible to guess
the intended meaning without looking at the context or situation or condition.
However, it was clear that illocutionary as a part of speech acts could not be
separated from the context of situation and all of them were related one another.
2.3.1 Illocutionary Acts
The main theory which was use to analyze the data in this study was speech
act theory proposed by John R. Searle, especially the categorization of
Elementary Illocutionary Acts, there were only five illocutionary points that
speaker could attempt to achieve in expressing a propositional content with an
illocutionary force, these were: assertive/representatives, commsives, directives,
declarative and expressive illocutionary point. Each illocutionary act with a force
has an illocutionary point which is internal to its being an act with that force. That
illocutionary point determines a particular direction of fit between words and
things. In attempting to perform an illocutionary act of the form F (P) speakers
relate the propositional content P to the world with the intention of achieving a
success of fit (or correspondence) between words and things. The illocutionary
act is satisfied when his success of fit is achieved from the appropriate direction
of fit. This study is also support by the theory of Austin (1970) and theory of
Halliday (1989).
Searle (1979) proposes the Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts. The
classifications are:
1. Assertive
The point or purposes of the members of the assertive class is to commit the
speaker (in varying degrees) to something’s being the case, to the truth of the
expressed preposition. All of the member’s assertive classes are assessable on the
dimension of assessment which includes true or false. It can be recognized that
the existence of assertive as a quite separate class, based on the notion of
illocutionary point, then the existence of a large number of a performative verbs
The examples of the verbs in this class are “state, boast, complain, conclude,
deduce, predict”. For example:
1. I state that it is raining.
2. I predict he will come.
2. Directive
The prepositional content is always that the hearer H does some future action
A. Verbs denoting in these members are: “ask”, “order”, “command”, “request”,
“beg”, “pled”, “pray”, “entreat”, “invite”, “permit”, and “advise”. For example:
1. I order you to leave.
2. I command you to stand at attention.
3. Commissive
Commissive is illocutionary act which point is to commit the speaker to
somefuture course of action. The point of a promise is to commit the speaker to
do somethingsuch as committing, promising, refusing, wishing, predicting,
threatening, vowing, volunteering etc.For example:
1. I promise to pay you the money.
2. I pledge allegiance to the flag.
4. Expressive
Illocutionary point of this class is to express the psychological state specified
in the sincerity condition about a state of affair specified in the prepositional
context. The verbs that are used in this class are “thank”, “congratulate”,
1. I apologize for stepping on your toe.
2. I thank you for paying me the money.
5. Declarative
It is defining characteristic of this class that about the correspondence between
the propositional content and reality, successful performance guarantees that the
prepositional content corresponds to the world. Declaration brings about some
alternation in the status or condition of the referred to object or object solely in
virtue of the fact that the declaration has been successfully performed. For
example:
1. I declare the meeting adjourned.
2. I find you guilty as change.
2.3.2Theory of Context of Situation
In language, pragmatics and discourse are closely connected. Both pragmatics
and discourse involve concepts far deeper than mere word definitions and
sentence structure. Unlike grammar, which involves the rules governing proper
language structure, pragmatics and discourse focus on the meaningfulness of
spoken or written language. Pragmatics and discourse go hand in hand with
context. Pragmatics handles language use in context. It is mainly engaged with
the analysis of use of sentences. Discourse analysis focuses on one more
paragraph, one article. However, discourse analysis can be done using a
discourse analysis there are lots of elements that can be classified as pragmatic
features.
Grundy (2000) states that in the case of implicature, context helps us to
determine what is conveyed implicitly but not explicitly stated by the speaker. It
means that the meaning of utterance depends on the context, which carries it. In
addition context makes us to attend senders and receiver’ needs, goals, and wants
are personalized not just to the conventional meanings of prior text but also to
particular socially and culturally defined communicative situations (Brown and
Yule, 1983).
In advance, we can say that context is all of the situations from out the
utterance which influences the language users and the situation where the
language is produced. Meanwhile, for inferring the context of situation, Brown
and Yule (1983:37) introduces the notion of a context of situation as follows:
The context of situation is best used to examine a wide range of human behavior in a variety of settings through the perspectives of many disciplines.
According to Halliday (1989), there are three features of context situation that
will be used in supporting the analysis of the problem about the function of
illocutionary act. Halliday developed an analysis of context in terms of field,
a. The Field of Discourse refers to what is happening, to the nature of the
social action that is taking place, what is it that the participants are
engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component.
b. The Tenor of Discourse refers to who taking part, to the nature of the
participants, their statues and roles; what kinds of role relationship obtain
among the participants, including permanent and temporary relationship
of one kind or another, both the types of speech role that they are taking
on in the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant relationship
in which they are involved.
c. The Mode of Discourse refers to what part the language is playing, what it
is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in that
situation; the symbolic organization of the text, the status that it has, and
its function in the context including the channel (is it spoken or written or
some combination of the two) and also the rhetorical mode, what is being
achieved by the text in terms of such categories as persuasive, expository,
didactic and the like.
Overall, it could be concluded that a certain of context situation underlying a
sentence or an utterance in order to the hearer could get the intended meaning or
the message of the utterance. In other words, the context of situation could help
the hearer to grasp and understand the intended meaning which was spoken by the
