23 8. Environment
Coopmand and Lull 2009 says that environment refers to “all external that influence a public speaking event” p. 18. For example, events occurring at
or near the time when the speech is delivered may be influence the audience’s react
2.2 The Finding and Discussion
This section is to show what the researcher finds in the analysis of a speech delivered by Steve Jobs. In the analysis, researcher analyzes what types of
speech acts used in the utterances. The analysis also involves what kind of illocutionary forces performed in the utterances. In the analysis, researcher used
the classification of speech acts proposed by Yule 1996. Yule 1996 classifies 5 types of speech acts based on the function
performed by speech acts: declarative, representative, directive, expressive, and commissive p. 53. However, in the speech analyzed there are only four types of
speech acts found: Representative, Directive, Expressive, and Commissive. There is no declarative speech acts found in the speech.
The speaker did not use any declarative speech acts because as Yule 1996 said that in using declarative speech acts, the speaker has to have a special
institution role, in a specific context. In the speech, Steve Jobs don’t have any special institution role to perform declarative speech acts. Actually, the speech is
an opening speech, so that there are no utterances that change the world via his utterances such as status.
2.2.1 Representatives
24 The first type of speech acts is representatives. Yule 1996 describes
representatives as those kinds of speech acts that “state what the speaker believes to be the case or not” p. 53. In the speech being analyzed, representative is the
most frequent type of speech acts compared with the other types. This fact is affected by the structural form of the speech delivered by Steve Jobs. Generally,
the speech delivered by Steve Jobs consists of three stories of his life. In those three stories, he talked a lot about his experiences when he studied in university,
when he decided to drop off, when he started his company, etc. When the speaker tells some stories or shares his experience, it means that normally he believes in
what he has said. When the speaker forms an utterance, Yule 1996 says that the speaker
forms an utterance with “some kind of function in mind” that we called Illocutionary force of utterances p. 48. In representatives, there are some
functions or illocutionary force performed such as describing, stating, clammingasserting, hypothesizing, insisting and predicting. In the speech being
analyzed, there are two illocutionary forces that are performed by the representative speech acts: description and claim.
1. Description Description is frequently used by the speaker because it is also related to
the three stories that he tells. By describing his three stories it means that he believes in those three stories.
Examples 13: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
25 a. The first story is about connecting the dot.
b. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then
stayed around as a drop in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.
c. So why did I drop out? d. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she
decided to put me up for adoption. e. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so
everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.
In the example 13 above, there is a piece of the first story. In the beginning the speaker describes what the first story is about. Then, in the following
utterance, the speaker gives further description about his decision to drop out of the college. He also describes why he dropped out by describing his mother.
In finding function ‘description’ in the speech, Yule 1996 proposes a way by finding the performative verb p. 49. However, in the example 13, there is no
performative verb ‘describing’ used to indicate that the speaker is describing something. In order to solve that problem, Yule 1996 proposes another ways to
indicate the function by looking for another indicator such as word order and question mark and looking for the felicity condition p. 50.
In example 13a, researcher considers that utterance as a description and representative by looking at the felicity condition. According to Yule 1996, in
felicity condition, there are five preconditions on speech acts and one of them is called content condition p. 50. According to Yule 1996, content condition
26 means the content of the utterance must be in accordance with the intended
illocutionary forces. The content of the utterance 13a is about describing what the first story is about.
In example 13b, researcher considers that utterance as a description and a representative speech acts because of some reasons. In the utterance, the speaker
describes his past experience when he dropped out of the college. The content of the utterance is about description. Through the description, the speaker let the
audiences know what happened to him in the past. In example 13c, the word order and question mark indicate that the
speaker asks a question. However, it is a rhetorical question. So the speaker doesn’t expect any answers from the audiences. He is the one that will answer the
question. Through the question, the speaker actually wants to describe why he dropped out.
In example 13d, the speaker describes his biological mother. Before he describes about it, the audiences might not know about his biological mother. So
when he describes his biological mother, the speaker let the audience know his mother. When the speaker describes his mother, he believes in his own
understanding and observation of his mother. In example 13e, the speaker describes what his mother felt at that moment.
Feeling is an abstract thing. When the speaker wants to tell the audience about his mother’s feeling, he needs to describe the feeling based on what he believes to be
27 his mother’s feeling. He believes about his mother’s feeling because he relates it
with what his mother has done. In order to prove that those utterances are representatives and more
specifically description, we can assess the utterances using an instrument proposed by Searle 1976. He says that “all the members of the representative
class are assessable on the dimension of assessment which includes true and false” p. 10. In the example 13, we can assess the utterances using the question “is it
true that ………?” and we might answer that question using “it is true or false that…..” In the example 13a,b, d, and e, it is possible that we assess the utterance
using true and false: “is it true that the first story is about connecting the dot?” However, for the example 13c, we cannot use the assessment to prove that the
utterance belongs to representative. We can use other indicator, such as considering the question as a rhetorical question as researcher has elaborated
above. 2. Claim
The second function found in representative is claim or assertion. Claim is also considered as representative because it involves also sense of believing.
Claim is statement that something is true or is a fact, although other people might not believe it, as illustrated in example 14.
Example 14: a. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best
decisions I’ve ever made. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
