Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background 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 studying speech acts, the understanding and acquaintance of context in which they Universitas Sumatera Utara 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 always related to the speaker’s intentions, such as stating, questioning, promising, Universitas Sumatera Utara 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 ‘us versus them’ attitude toward bacteria”. Universitas Sumatera Utara 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 hisher feeling and heshe is thanking. The person above performs the thanking action by using an utterance as stated above. Discover Magazine is an American scientific magazine that publishes many articles about science for a general audience. This monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. This magazine intended to be somewhat easier to read than scientific American but more detailed and science-oriented than magazines like popular science. The popular science in Discover magazine would be an 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 Discover Magazine April 2013 edition would be the focus of this thesis. Discover Universitas Sumatera Utara 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.

1.2 Problems of The Study