20 Semantically, it is a statement to inform the hearer that he room is very clean.
But, pragmatically, It may mean the opposite of what the words mean, “this room is very dirty”
2.3. Speech Acts
Pragmatics is defined as the study of language use and linguistic communication, and the central concern of pragmatics is the study of speech acts.
Speech act is a part of pragmatic discussion which relates to what a certain sentence and utterance possesses certain act within it. Speaking a language is performing
speech acts, acts such as making statements, giving commands, asking questions, making promises, and so on. In other words, we can do things with speech.
The study of how people do things with speech is the study of speech acts. In studying speech acts one is acutely aware of the importance of the context of the
utterance. In some circumstance there is a sheep dog in the closet is a warning, but the very same sentence may be promise or even as mere statement of fact, depending on
the circumstance. In a book written by J.R. Searle, Speech Act: an essay in the philosophy of
language 1969, Wijana 2009: 2 notes, at least, there are three types of speech acts carried out by a speaker namely Locution, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Act.
2.3.1. Locution
Locutionary Act which is also known as utterance act, is the actual form of words used by the speaker and their semantic meaning. It is an act of uttering
something, syllables, words, phrases or sentence form of a language. This is not a
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21 very important act because it is not communicative. It can be performed by a parrot,
tape recorder, radio, etc.
2.3.2. Illocutionary Act
Illocutionary act is an act performed in saying something. When an utterance aims to do something, this is what is often called in pragmatic terms, the illocutionary
act namely the act of doing something. It can be classified into illocutionary act when we regard to situation and the context of the utterance. For more discussion, this topic
will be explained further in chapter 3.
2.3.3. Perlocutionary Act
Perlocutionary act is the third part of speech act which is distinctive from two other kinds of speech act. It is the act that produces effects on the hearer or defined by
the hearer’s reaction to the speaker utterance. Let us see the example below: When I say, “there is a snake beside you” and the hearer believe what I say. Then, it
may cause the hearer panic, scream or run. These emotions or action of yours is the perlocution of my utterance, or the perlocutionary act I perform by making that
utterance. From the example above, it can be concluded that perlocutionary act happens depends on the hearer’s reaction.
Typical examples of perlocutionary acts are: a.
Inspiring b.
Impressing c.
Embarrassing d.
Intimidating e.
Persuading
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22 f.
Deceiving g.
Misleading h.
irritating There are some characteristics of perlocutionary act:
Perlocutionary acts are not performed merely by uttering explicit performative
sentence. For example, thought, feeling, expression and action.
Perlocutionary acts can be represented as an illocutionary act of speaker S and its effects on the hearer H. it can be illustrated as below:
1. S tells + H believes…= S persuades H that…
2. S tells + H intends…= S persuades H that…
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3. ILLOCUTIONARY ACT
