Speech Acts Typologies Speech Acts

29 of the words, the specific purpose that the speakers have in mind ”. Respectively, Austin 1962:150 classifies illocutionary forces into five categories: 1 Verdictives which function to give verdict like estimating, reckoning, and appraising, besides, it is essential to give a finding to something, both fact or qualities, which is for different reason hard to be certain about and usually done by jury, arbitrator or umpire; 2 Exercitives or the exercise of the power, right or influence like appointing, voting, ordering, urging, advising, etc.; 3 Commisives or typified by promising or otherwise undertaking which commit the hearer to do something, but also covers the declaration or the announcement that cost for attention; 4 Behabitives which are very miscellaneous and have something to do with attitudes and social behavior like apologizing, congratulating, cursing, etc.; 5 Expositives that quite hard to define literally and describe how the utterances fit the course of an argument or conversation, or expository in general, like I reply, I conclude, I assume, I postulate, etc. Furthermore, following Austin theory on Speech Acts, Searle in Levinson 1983:240 develops the theories and proposes new theory on five taxonomies of speech acts, they are: representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. The first type of speech acts are representative. These speech acts are assertions about a state of affairs in the world hence they are also called ‘assertives’ Leech, 1983:128. Thus, these kind of speech acts carry the values of ‘true’ and ‘false’ where their ‘point’ as to ‘fit’ and should match the world in order to be true Mey, 2001:120. Further, Cutting 2002:17 argues that representative acts are the acts in which the words state what the speaker believes to be the case. 30 Simply, dealing with representatives acts, the function of these acts are committing the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition. Some of the examples are concluding, describing, claiming, hypothesizing, insisting, predicting, etc. The second type of speech acts are directives. Mey 2001:120 mentions as the name says, these speech acts embody an effort on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something or to ‘direct’ him or her towards some goal of the speaker’s, mostly. He adds as to ‘fit’ that these speech acts represent, there is also a clear ‘direction’ in the technical sense of this term from world to words the world is adapted to the uttered words. On the other hand, the directives differ in force: from pious wish to peremptory, harsh order 121. In a more simple explanation, directives speech acts can be used to express attempts of speaker to get the addressee to do something based on speaker’s intention or desire. For instance: requesting, ordering, suggesting, forbidding, begging, etc. The third type of speech acts are commissives. Just like directives, commisives operate a change in the world by means of creating an obligation, however, this obligation is created in the speaker, not the hearer like in directives Mey, 2001:121. Therefore, the commisives acts create a promise in which the speaker commit himselfherself to do some future course of action such as promising, swearing, threatening, offering, etc. The fourth type of speech acts are expressives. According to Mey 2001:121, these speech acts express an inner state of speaker where the expression is essentially subjective and tells us nothing about the world. Salgado 2011:10 suggests expressives acts as the acts where the speaker expresses hisher PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 31 psychological state in relation to a particular state or affairs. In short, we may see that these kind of speech acts are acts that state or express what the speaker feels like apologizing, praising, congratulating, regretting, thanking, condoling, greeting, and so forth. The fifth one are declarations. Searle 1979:37 sees declarations bring about some alternation in the status or condition of the referred to object or objects solely by virtue of the fact that the declaration has been successfully performed. Besides, Cutting 2002:17 gives his idea that declarations are words and expressions that change the world by their very utterances. One important thing is that after the declaration is made, there is a state of change to objects because of the speaker’s utterances. For example: marrying, declaring war, christening, firing, arresting, blessing, etc. Furthermore, based on the elaboration above, it can be inferred that speech acts enable the structure to convey function to carry the meaning of the utterances. One of the easiest approaches in distinguishing types of speech acts is by made on the basis of the relationship between the structure and the function. Referring to Searle’s taxonomies, the request acts belongs to directive act where the main function of this act is to express the speaker’s desire or intention to get the hearer or the interpreter to do or not to do something. In fact, dealing with the directive function, the ability to perform speech acts appropriately in social contexts demonstrates the speaker’s communicative competence. Thus, to minimize the face-threatening effects on the addressee, the speaker sometimes benefits some modifications and strategies to create a more positive feedback. 32

6. Politeness

The ability in making request has always been related to the notion of politeness. The classical theory of politeness proposed by Vanderveken 1985 states that “politeness deals with the speaker’s utterances extend to affect the hearer’s feelings, attitude, and behavior”. Holtgraves 2002 implies that politeness allows people to perform many interpersonally sensitive actions in a nonthreatening or less threatening manner. In the same line, Meyerhoff 2011:312 emphasizes that politeness deals with the actions taken by competent speakers in a community in order to avoid possible social or interpersonal disturbance. Thus, the politeness in request is seen as the way to d iminish the effect of the ‘Face Threatening’ effects to the addressee. According to Meier 1996, politeness can be measured from the perspective of a particular context and par ticular addressee’s expectation. Leech 2014:4-8 highlights that there are eight characteristics of politeness needed to be concerned in dealing with requests acts. Firstly, politeness is “not obligatory”. Here Leech suggests that “people can be nonpolite: they normally will not behave politely unless there is a reason to be polite ”. Secondly, there are varying “gradations” of polite and impolite behavior. Thirdly, there is often “a sense of what is normal” recognized by members of society as to how polite to be for a particular occasion. Fourthly, how far the politeness will occur or whether it will occur at all, “depends on the situation ”. Furthermore, fifthly, there is a “reciprocal asymmetry” in polite behavior between two parties A and B. It means that “whatever is felt to be polite in A’s behavior would be felt to convey the reverse of politeness if observed, on PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 33 the same occasion, in B’s behavior”. Sixthly, a rather bizarre aspect of politeness is that it manifests itself in repetitive behavior which is to a lesser or greater degree ritualized. Seventhly, it is fairly central to politeness that it involves the passing of some kind of “transactional of value” between the speaker and the other party. And at last, eighthly, politeness is about its tendency to preserve a “balance” of value between the participants A and B. Despite of these eight characteristics of politeness, on the other hand, Brown and Levinson in Partington 2006 list three ‘sociological variables’ that speakers employ in choosing the degree of politeness to use and in calculating the amount of the threat to their own face, namely: a the social distance of the speaker and hearer, b the relative ‘power’ of the speaker and hearer, and c the absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture. These three variables go in line with the level of the politeness applied. Therefore, the greater the social distance between the interlocutors, the more politeness is expected. Besides, the greater the relative power perceived between the speaker and the hearer, the more politeness is recommended. And, finally, the greater the gap between the rank or the imposition between the speaker and the hearer, subsequently, the more politeness have to be used. And one important thing to be emphasized is that “politeness is cultural-spesific and the politeness norms are not u niversal” Watts, 2003. Furthermore, Blum-Kulka et al 1989 emphasize that indirectness of request does not always signify politeness. Eventhough direct strategies can be treated as impolite because they indicate a lack of concern to addressee’s face, we cannot preserve that the most indirect request strategies applied means that the