Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Communication is an important aspect in our daily activities as human beings. People need communication to do conversation, to share their ideas, opinions, and so many things with other people. To achieve the goal of communication, there must be speaker and hearer. Beebe states that: Communication is the process of acting on information. Someone does or says something, and others think or do something in response to the action or the words as they understand them. 2009:2 From that statement above, it can be concluded that everybody in this world will always deal with communication in their relationship with other people. A successful communication cannot be separated from the tool of communication that is language. According to Finegan language can be defined as follows: A language is a set of elements and system for combining them into patterned expressions that can be used to accomplish specific tasks in specific contexts. Utterances report news, greet relatives, invite friends to lunch, request the time of day, make wisecracks, poke fun, argue for a course of action, make inquiries, express admiration, propose marriage, create fictional world, and so on in an endless list. 2004:11 Through the use of language, people can express what they want to say. In this world, people also can do action through their language. The focus of the language is not about communicating information, but it also focuses on how to establish and maintain relationships with other people Trudgill, 1983:13. Using language, the people can build so many relationships among people that they meet every day, for example between a leader and employees, between father and his son. In conducting this research, the writer takes an example of communication between a leader and subordinates in a workplace. People know that in an organization or a workplace, there is always a leader and subordinates. Leader leads his or her subordinates to achieve their organizational goals. How the way a leader leads an organization cannot be separated from what we called leadership. In his book, Daft 2005:5 defines leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes. According to Lewin and Lippitt in Herbert’s book, there are three kinds of leadership style based on the distinctive behavior pattern associated with the leader. First is The Autocratic Style in which the leader becomes the major source in the group’s activities. Second is the Democratic Style in which the leader shares his influence with the group. Third is The Laissez-Faire Style in which a leader is not really a leader at all 1976:379. In this research, the writer tries to analyze how directives speech acts can show a leadership style using Pragmatics approach. The writer takes The Devil Wears Prada Movie as the object of this research. In the movie, Andrea has to survive working under pressure at Runway. Runway is a fashion magazine which very famous in New York City. She has a devil boss named Miranda Priestly who manage and control the whole fashion industry. As the editor in chief, Miranda wants all the works done precisely because Runway Fashion Magazine is published regularly so they need to meet the deadline. The writer finds that there is culture grows up inside that workplace. Miranda becomes the central person who organizes all of the activities in Runway Fashion Magazine. The subordinates also have to adapt with precise and fast work in order to achieve their business goal. Because of her characteristics in running Runway, Miranda Priestly becomes the focus of this analysis. As the editor in chief of Runway, Miranda has unique leadership style in driving her company. Usually, Miranda uses directives and explicit forms in commenting and responding her subordinates. Sometimes she instructs her subordinates to do something which is impossible to do. Dealing with Miranda means that you have to obey with all the rules. This research aims to determine Miranda’s leadership style through Pragmatics study. To reach that aim, the writer uses speech act theory. Searle 1974:16 also supports this theory since he states briefly that all linguistics communication involves linguistic acts, and speech acts are the basic or minimal units of linguistic communication. The writer tries to analyze how Miranda’s directives speech acts represent her leadership style in running Runway Fashion Magazine. Therefore, engaging theory of directives speech acts, direct and indirect speech acts, politeness strategy, components of speech with theory of leadership style are the steps to conduct this research.

B. Problem Formulation