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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter consists of two sections. The first section is theoretical
description which will enlighten the readers about any relevant theories of this research. The theories of speech acts, politeness and written communication will
be elaborated more in this section. The second section is theoretical framework. This section summarizes the major theories which will be the framework to solve
the research problems.
A. Theoretical Description
This section discusses three theories which are closely relevant to the study conducted in this research. The theories are about speech acts, politeness and
written communication. Since this study focuses on illocutionary acts, the theories of speech acts will be focused more on the theory of illocutionary acts. The
theories of politeness will also be presented as the other main focus of this research. In the theories of politeness, sociolinguistics is presented because
politeness is under the scope of sociolinguistics. Then, the theories about politeness as pragmatics study are also elaborated because this study focuses on
the utterances which are used based on the context. The theory of written communication will also be elaborated since this study focuses on the
illocutionary acts and politeness strategies shown in written messages. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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1. Speech Acts
The term speech acts is used to describe the acts which are performed by the speakers through their utterances. When people are speaking, they do not only
concern about grammatical structures or linguistic meaning of the utterances but also perform
the acts which will ease the hearer to convey speaker‟s meaning Yule, 1996. According to Searle 1969, speech acts can be differed into three
acts, namely an act of saying something, an act of doing something and an act of affecting someone. Those three acts may appear in the utterances which are used
to understand the meaning carried out by the words. According to Austin‟s theory 1962, there are three kinds of speech acts
which are differed one to another. The three kinds of speech acts are named as locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts. The explanation of
each of the terms will be illustrated as follows.
a. Locutionary Acts
Locutionary acts perform the acts of saying something. It contains the actual meaning of the utterances Searle, 1969. These acts show what is said by
the speaker, containing the form of the words which are uttered Cutting, 2002, p. 16. Locutionary acts also describe the literal meaning of something. When the
speaker says something, he or she is conveying the meaning literally. As the example is when the speaker says, “It is getting dark.” The sentence means that
the speaker thinks of the situation in the room which is getting dark because the day will be over. He or she really means what he or she says literally Searle,
1969. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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