Focus of the Research

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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Theoretical Framework

1. Pragmatics

Charles Morris found the term pragmatics in 1938. First, he studied semiotics, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. He argued that pragmatics is a branch of semiotics, the relation between signs to interpreters. After that, he concerned with elaboration of relevant metalanguage and descriptive studies to make distinction between pure studies. Finally, he noted that interjections and command are governed by pragmatics rule Levinson 1983:1 If sociolinguistics studies society’s rule, then pragmatics studies about the rule of the rules. Yule 1996:3 states pragmatics studies of the meanings as communicated by a speaker or writer and interpreted by a listener or reader. It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. By this concept, Yule interprets pragmatics as the study of speaker’s meaning. He explains that the concept of pragmatics is a meaningful communication bounded with the use of semantic tools. It is relatively connected with the notion “context”.

2. Adjacency Pairs

Levinson 1983: 296, 303, and 308 expresses that three basic findings behind a conversation are turn-taking, adjacency pairs, and overall organization. Since this research deals with adjacency pairs, the researcher will not discuss the other basic findings. Hotgraves 2002:106 argues that the conversation analytic view of adjacency pairs is a view of language use in action, and more importantly, as joint action. A single individual cannot perform adjacency pairs. It must be performed by two different people who are orienting to each other’s actions. Moreover, Hudson 1996:134 states that adjacency pairs are a type of utterance done by one speaker which requires a particular type of utterance by another. The most obvious adjacency pairs are a sequence of question followed by answer, but there are many other forms, such as a greeting and greeting, b complaint and apology, c summons and answer, d invitation and acceptance, and so on. Sacks and Schegloff adds some general features in adjacency pairs. They begin with a key concept that a conversation may contain at least two turns. Some turns may refer to others and he separates a class of sequences of turns called adjacency pairs. Then, they arrange special characterization for adjacency pairs in three specific categories. First, adjacency pairs must have at least two long utterances to be categorized as turns. Second, the turns are open, successfully and continuously closed by the speakers. Then, the last is adjacency pairs have two parts which is named as first part and second part. The first part of the adjacency pairs will be responded by the second part, so this condition will relate the utterances one to another. This part will select a specific act and speaker to produce the second part as the response. The most appropriate second part will