the kinds of actions that they are performing when they talk. Furthermore, as the study of hidden meaning which is not actually said or written, pragmatics necessarily
involves interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said. It requires the consideration of how speakers organize
what they want to say, whom they are talking to, and the setting and the situation when the talk occurs.
Pragmatics also explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning. This type of
study investigates how the hidden meaning intended by the speaker can be recognized by the hearer. A speaker or writer must be able to depend on their purposes and the
types of action that they are performing. Thus, their intended meaning can be successfully delivered to the hearer.
In brief, pragmatics is the study of language in context. Therefore, based on the description of pragmatics explained above, this research conducts pragmatic study to
reveal the use of illocutionary act by the main characters in a movie entitled The Back-up Plan.
2. Context
A crucial aspect in studying pragmatics is context. According to Nunan 1993: 7, context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the
discourse is embedded. In other words, context is background knowledge that is assumed to be shared by a speaker and a hearer and which contributes to the hearer’s
interpretation of what the speaker means in his or her utterance. This unit examines how factors such as time, place, and social relationship between the speaker and the
hearer affect the ways in which language is used to perform various functions. In producing a sentence or an utterance, people must also understand the context
in which the sentence or the utterance is performed to fully understand its meaning. According to Holmes 2001: 8, the participant, the setting, the topic, and the purpose
of the conversation have to be considered by the speakers to effectively convey the message to other participants.
Furthermore, Cutting 2002: 3 explains that there are three sorts of contexts to be observed in a conversation. They are presented below.
a the situational context, it is what speakers know about what they can see
around them; b
the background knowledge, what they know about each other and the world; c
the co-textual context, what they know about what they have been saying. In pragmatic study, context is a vital element. Mey 1993:58 asserts that a
pragmatic thing is under the context bound. This means that someone always operates in context to understand the implied meaning of an utterance. Context plays great role
in someone’s interpretation of an utterance and how he or she determines between the literal meaning and the implied meaning of the utterance.
In addition, Leech 1983:13 also characterizes that a context has great influences in understanding the meaning of an utterance. A speaker and the addressee share their
background in understanding the utterance through a context. The communication
