Background of the study

1

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study and explains what prompted the researcher to conduct the research. It then moves to identify the problem that the researcher wants to discuss throughout this thesis and clarifies the objectives and significance of doing this research.

A. Background of the study

Language plays crucial roles in human life since it is the main tool to communicate with one another. People use language to express thought, ideas and emotion by using sounds, gestures and signals for many different purposes and reasons. According to Clark 1977 language stands at the centre of human affairs, from the most prosaic to the most profound. This means that language cannot be separated from everyday life. When people use language in a conversation, they produce utterances in a particular context. An utterance is a unit of analysis of speech which has been defined in various ways but most commonly as a sequence of words within a single person’s turn at talk that falls under a single intonation counter Schmidt and Richards, 2002. These utterances must be understood by the hearers in order that the speakers’ messages can be delivered successfully. Therefore, it is necessary to know the context of the conversation. The example of an utterance that is influenced by the context is I now pronounce you husband and wife. The sentence above may be uttered in at least two different sets of circumstances, namely a minister who utters to a young 2 couple getting married in the presence of their assembled families or an actor dressed as a minister to two actors assembled in the same church for a filming. The utterance I now pronounce you husband and wife will affect a marriage between the couple intending to get married. However, the same utterance will have no effect on marital status of any party on the movie location. Thus, the circumstances of utterance create different meanings. The sentence uttered in the wedding context and the sentence uttered in the film context has the same sentence meaning but are different utterances, each with its own utterance meaning. When the speakers of the language produce utterances in a given context, they also perform actions such as informing, commanding, requesting, etc. These actions are known as speech acts. According to Austin 1962, there are three types of speech acts, namely locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. A locutionary act is the literal meaning of the utterances. Meanwhile, illocutionary acts refer to the extra meaning of the utterance produced on the basis of its literal meaning and perlocutionary acts deal with the effects of the utterances on the hearer, depending on specific circumstances. In addition, Searle 1976 categorizes speech acts into directives , commissives, representatives, declaratives, and expressives. The different types of speech act show many functions such as exchanging factual information, intellectual information, emotional attitudes, moral attitudes, persuasion, and socializing Searle, 1976. Also, it reveals various communicative intentions of the speakers in producing utterances. The speakers highly expect that 3 the hearers understand speakers’ intention. In fact, the meaning in conversation is sometimes expressed implicitly. The implicit expression provides proposition which is not expressed explicitly in the utterances. Language is also essential to politicians since most activities performed by the politicians utilize language. Beard 2000 says that political campaigns, speeches, written texts, broadcast are meant to inform and instruct voters about issues that are considered to be of great importance. With regard to this, it is clear that speech making is one of the political activities of politicians which are made possible through the channel opened up by language. One of the famous politicians in Indonesia is Joko Widodo known as Jokowi. He is the current President of the Republic of Indonesia and has been successful in his political career. He won over voters in the last Indonesia’s general election. The position of the president is the highest in any country, therefore the president needs constant briefing or link with the people. One of the ways to achieve this is through speech prepared to convey the messages to the people. With regard to this, his speech is expected to highlight the spirit of having better nation and hope to the whole union. Therefore, speech can be a media for establishing and maintaining social relationships, building image, expressing feelings, and selling ideas, policies and programmes in any society. With regard to this, the researcher is interested to analyze the language used by Jokowi in his speeches especially analyzing the speech acts. 4

B. Limitation of the problems