ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS USED BY MAIN CHARACTERS IN INKHEART MOVIE

ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS USED BY MAIN CHARACTERS
IN INKHEART MOVIE

THESIS

By:

YUNI WAHYUNINGSIH
06360233

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG
JULY 2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to God, all praises be to Allah SWT, the Lord of the universe who has
given me his beneficent so that I am able to finish this thesis.
Peace and Salam are always blessed and poured down upon our beloved
Muhammad SAW as the last prophet that has shown us the right ways, then we will

always in the shelter of Allah SWT, now, until hereafter life. Amien.
This thesis entitled “Illocutionary Acts Used by Main Characters in Inkheart
Movie” is intended to fulfill the requirement for achieving bachelor degree at
University of Muhammadiyah Malang. This thesis would not been completed without
some supports from many people. Thus, I would like to express my deepest gratitude
to my advisors Riza Elfana, M.A. and Rina Wahyu S, M.Ed. who have given me
finish my thesis successfully. Furthermore, I also would like to express my sincerely
gratitude to all the lecturers of English Department who have taught me to be a good
bachelor, my family and all of my friends who cannot be mentioned one by one.
Hopefully Allah SWT will give them in return all of the good things that have been
given to me. Amin.

Malang, August 31, 2012
The Writer,

Yuni Wahyuningsih

TABLE OF CONTENT
APROVAL ........................................................................................................
LEGALIZATION ............................................................................................

MOTTO & DEDICATION ............................................................................
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ...............................................................................
TABLE OF CONTENT ...................................................................................
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................

i
ii
iii
iv
v
vii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of Study ............................................................................
1.2 Statement of Problem ............................................................................
1.3 Purpose of Study ...................................................................................
1.4 Significant of Study ..............................................................................
1.5 Scope and Limitation ............................................................................
1.6 Definition of the Key Term ...................................................................


1
4
4
5
5
5

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LETERATUR
2.1 Pragmatics ............................................................................................. 7
2.2 Speech Act ............................................................................................ 9
2.2.1 Locutionary Act .......................................................................... 10
2.2.2 Illocutionary Act ......................................................................... 11
2.2.3 Perlocutionary Acts..................................................................... 17
2.3 Movie .................................................................................................... 18
2.4 Type of Movie....................................................................................... 18
2.5 Inkheart Movie ...................................................................................... 22
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Design .................................................................................... 24
3.2 Research Object ..................................................................................... 25
3.3 Research Instrument .............................................................................. 25

3.3.1 Observation ................................................................................... 25
3.3.2 Document...................................................................................... 26
3.4 Data Collection ...................................................................................... 27
3.5 Data Analysis ......................................................................................... 27

CHAPTER IV: RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Research Finding .................................................................................. 28
4.1.1 Sentence Type Used by the Main Characters ............................... 28
4.1.1.1 Declarative Sentence ........................................................... 28
4.1.1.2 Interrogative Sentence ......................................................... 32
4.1.1.3 Imperative Sentence ............................................................ 33
4.1.2 Kinds of Direct Illocutionary Acts ............................................... 35
4.1.3 Kinds of Indirect Illocutionary Acts ............................................. 38
4.2 Discussion ............................................................................................ 39
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
5.1 Conclusion ............................................................................................ 41
5.2 Suggestion ............................................................................................. 41
REFERENCES
APPENDIX


REFERENCES

Ary, Donald. 2002. Introduction to Research in Education. Sixth edition: Northern
Illino University.
Bogdan, Robert C and Sari Knopp Biklen. 2007. Qualitative Research for Education.
Fifth edition. Sidney: Syracuse University.
Cutting, Joan. 2002. Pragmatics and Discourse. London: Routledge.
Hurford, James and Brendan Heasley. 1983. Semantics: A Coursebook. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, Burke and Larry Christensen. 2010. Education Research: Qualitative,
Quantitative and Mixed Approaches. London: Pearson Education.
Lampard, Richard. 2002. Practical Social Investigation: Qualitative and Quantitative
Methods in Social Research. Prentice Hall.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nilasari, Risky. 2009. The Employment of Illocutionary acts in Madagascar Movie.
Unpublished Thesis. Malang: University State of Malang.
Richards, Jack C and Richards Schmidt. 2002. Longman Dictionary of Language
Teaching and Applied Linguistics. London: Pearson Education.
Wiley, John. 2005. Essentials of Research Design and Methodology. Hoboken, New

Jersey.
Yule. George. 1996. Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.
http://www.movies.com.au/movie-genres/

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

This chapter, discuses background of the study, statement of the problems,
purposes of the study, significance of the study, scope and limitation, and definition
of key terms.

1.1 Background of the Study
As we know, people in the world cannot live alone. They need to interact with
other people to survive. To interact with others, people use language as
communication tool. In daily life people make interpersonal communication with
others. They express their attitude and influence the interlocutor.
People always use conversation to get two-way communication with their
hearer. They can communicate their ideas, feelings, or opinions toward their hearer
through conversation. It means that they want to deliver messages to their hearer.
Moreover, they want their hearer react what they are expected to do. Thus,

conversation is the way to deliver the speaker meaning.
In communication people do not produce word without function in it. They
actually utter sentence with communication purposes such as suggesting someone,
requesting,

complaining,

commanding

etc.

To

avoid

misinterpretation

or

miscommunication that happens in the conversation, someone should know the

meaning of the utterance that someone uses in the conversation. Someone should try
to understand what the interlocutor means by his/her utterance. In a good



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conversation someone should capture the message behind the utterance that someone
says because sometimes someone says something implicitly. That is why in having a
conversation with others someone should understand the meaning that the speaker
really wants to say.
So, in helping someone interpret what exactly the meaning of their
interlocutor, someone should learn about the concept of speech acts. Speech acts is a
study about saying versus doing. It means that in saying a word, sometimes someone
uses word not only to say things but also he/ she uses it to do things. It means that
when someone says something, it has action behind it.
Yule (1996:48) states the action performed by producing an utterance will
consist of three related acts. The first is locutionary acts, which is the basic act of
utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. The second is

illocutionary acts. It is performed via the communication force of an utterance.
People don’t just produce well-formed utterances with no purpose, but also forming
an utterance with some kind of function in mind. The third is perlocutionary acts, an
utterance with a function to have an effect on the hearer.
In an utterance, illocutionary acts can be performed in two ways, direct and
indirect illocutionary act (Hurford & Heasley, 1983: 259). Direct illocutionary act is
an illocutionary act in which only the illocutionary force and propositional content
literally expressed by the lexical items and syntactic form of the utterance are
communicated.
While, indirect illocutionary act is an illocutionary act in which the speaker
expresses another illocutionary force other than that literally expressed in the
 
 

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utterance, by relying on, shared background knowledge principle convention and the
ability of the addressee to make inferences. For example, the direct illocutionary of,
“Can you pass the salt, please?” is an enquiry about the hearer’s ability to pass the

salt. The indirect illocutionary is a request to the hearer to pass the salt.
Starting with curiosity that in every utterance sometimes has more than one
illocution, the researcher wants to know what kind of direct and indirect illocution in
the movie. The researcher chooses movie because movie cannot be separated from
our daily life. Movie can be used as language communication that convey message
through picture. It has multifunction not only as entertainment but also as
communication media that convey message from the movie maker to viewers. The
viewers can get moral value from it that can be useful as a tool to develop social
awareness. It means that the movie is very effective media used as teaching learning
process in education.
Movie is an imagination of the movie maker to entertain people. From movie,
we can get benefit likes how the actors perform the character and we can get the
message from it. Here, the researcher chooses Inkheart movie as the data source to
know the illocution between the main characters. The researcher chooses Inkheart
movie because the plot of the story is good, the dialog of the movie is easy to
understand and the utterances are stated clearly by the main characters.
The research about illocution has been done by Nilasari (2009). She analyzes
the type of illocutionary acts in Madagascar movie. She found that the type of
illocutionary act mostly performed by the main characters, Alex and Marty were


 
 

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assertive (66.84%), directive (19.38%), expressive (8.67%), commisive (5.11%) and
no declarative. In that research, she did not analyze the direct and indirect illocution.
Based on the background above the researcher wants to analyze illocutionary
acts used by main characters in Inkheart movie. Here, the researcher focuses on the
kind of direct and indirect illocution based on sentences type.

1.2 Statement of the Problem
1. What types of sentences are performed by the main characters in Inkheart
movie?
2. What kinds of direct illocution of the utterances are performed by the main
characters in Inkheart movie?
3. What kinds of indirect illocution of the utterances are performed by the main
character in Inkheart movie?

1.3 Purposes of the Study
1 To know the sentences type of the utterances performed by the main
characters in Inkheart movie
2. To know what kinds of direct illocution of the utterances performed by the
main characters in Inkheart movie
3. To know the kinds of indirect illocution of the utterances performed by the
main characters in Inkheart movie

 
 

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1.4 Significance of the Study
This study will be useful for:
1. The Students
The students will know that a sentence of utterances has some functions in
communication such as questioning, requesting, suggesting and so on. It can
be used as source of discussion by the students in pragmatics subject.
2. The Lectures
It can be used as an alternative reference material or teaching by the lecturers
in pragmatics study especially in speech acts.
3. The Future Researchers
It can be used as reference about direct and indirect illocution in movie
especially in Inkheart movie by future researchers who want to conduct the
similar study.

1.5 Scope and limitation
This study will be focused on illocutions which is taken from the
conversations between main characters. The researcher limits the study of direct and
indirect illocution of the main characters in scope of pragmatics.

1.6 Definition of Key terms
1. Illocutionary acts (illocution) is the act viewed in terms of the utterance’s
significance within a conventional system of social interaction (Hurford and
Heasley, 1983: 244)
 
 

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2. Direct illocution of an utterance is the illocution most directly indicated by a
literal reading of the grammatical form and vocabulary of the sentence uttered
(Hurford and Heasley, 1983: 259)
3. Indirect illocution of an utterance is an illocutionary act in which the
speaker expresses another illocutionary force other than that literally
expressed in the utterance, by relying on, shared background knowledge
principle convention and the ability of the addressee to make inference
(Hurford and Heasley, 1983: 259)
4. Sentence is the largest unit of grammatical organization within which parts of
speech (e.g. nouns, verbs, adverbs) and grammatical classes (e.g. word,
phrase, clause) are said to function. In English a sentence normally contains
one independent clause with a finite verb (Richards and Richard, 2002: 480)
5. Utterance is a sequence of words within a single person’s turn at talk that
falls under a single intonation contour. Utterances may sometimes consist of
more than one sentence, but more commonly consist of stretches of speech
shorter than sentences (Richards and Richard, 2002: 573)
6. Inkheart movie is adapted from the novel by Cornelia Funke. It is about Mo
Folchart, played by Brendan Fraser. He is the devoted father who discovers he
is a silvertongue. He has the ability to make characters in children's books
come to life by reading them aloud but this opens a portal that lets real people
get spirited away into works of fiction.