In brief, The Back-up Plan movie portrays how couples in the United States normally live and face their problems. Through this movie also, the phenomena of
donor insemination is introduced as a problem solving for women who are unable to have child.
B. Previous Studies
Two studies related to this research are Commissive Illocution in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: A Pragmatic Analysis
by Debora Pangaribuan and An Analysis of Illocutionary Act in Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time Movie
by Nur Azni Wardani.
Debora Pangaribuan’s research which is entitled Commissive Illocution in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: A Pragmatic Analysis
analyzed commisive illocutionary act employed by the characters in The Sun also Rises novel. Her
research applied descriptive qualitative method. The main objective of her study was to find commissive illocutionary act in the novel. The study revealed that there were
four types of commissive act in the novel. They were promising, offering, threatening and betting. The most dominant type of commissive act used in the novel was
promising. Moreover, Nur Azni Wardani’s study which is entitled An Analysis of
Illocutionary Act in Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time Movie analyzed illocutionary
act performed by Dastan who is the main character in the movie. Her research applied descriptive qualitative method. The objectives of her study were to identify contexts
underlying illocutionary act used in Dastan’s utterances and the implicature behind it. The study indicated that there were five illocutionary act occurred in Dastan’s
utterances. They were representatives reporting, stating, and concluding, directives ordering, asking, requesting, and commanding, expressives praising and
apologizing, commisives refusal and pledging, and declaratives declaring. This study is different from the two previous studies mentioned above. In the two
studies, they only analyzed the types of illocutionary act. Meanwhile, this study focuses not only on the types of illocutionary act but also on the social function of the
performance of illocutionary act. Furthermore, this study also deeply analyzes illocutionary act employed in the movie by investigating the illocutionary force of the
two main characters’ utterances. With regard to the background of the study and the previous studies, the researcher is inspired and motivated to conduct a study of
illocutionary act in a movie entitled The Back-up Plan.
