Background of The Study
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It is important to understand the meaning of someone utterances, so both the speaker and the hearer understand each other and they can communicate well. There will be
misunderstanding if the hearer can not get the meaning of the speaker utterances. For example, when someone says “do that again, and I’ll kick you”, it means that the
speaker doesn’t try to make a request to do something, but he tries to make a threat in order to stop what the hearer do. In case of this situation, the hearer should be able to understand the
meaning of the speaker utterances to avoid the misunderstanding. This study describes the form of speech acts in a dialogue at the Faculty of Cultural
Studies USU in data collection, see the method used followed by a technical note as advanced techniques. While the assessment of data used descriptive analysis method. The theory used in
this research is the theory of speech acts by JL Austin. From the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that the acts of locutions,
illocutionary acts, and acts perlocution many students in dialogue Faculty of Cultural Studies USU, Follow locutions is a form of speech acts are most commonly found in the dialogue.
Furthermore, forms of speech acts less common in the dialogue dialogue is illocutionary acts and perlocution.
One way of appreciating the distinctive features of speech acts is in contrast with other well-established phenomena within the philosophy of language. Accordingly in this entry I will
consider the relation among speech acts and: semantic content, grammatical mood, speaker- meaning, logically perfect languages, perlocutions, performatives, presuppositions, and
implicature. This will enable us to situate speech acts within their ecological niche.
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The background of this thesis is about the uses of the students’ speech act at Faculty of Cultural Studies Canteen University of Sumatera Utara, but only covers some of the department,
why I chose this title? because most students very compose in their speech act, with a slang term that is often used to talk during activity but not all students know what they talking about,
therefore occurred to me to analyze what they are saying that all students of Culture Science understand what the meaning of the utterance.
Pragmatics, as a branch of linguistics, plays its role to study about the meaning of language and its relation to the context. In the theory of pragmatics, there are three types of acts
locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts, they are called speech acts. Speech acts as the center of pragmatic study, is defined as a study of how to do the things with words.
In general, we recognize the types of act performed by a speaker in uttering a sentence such as ordering, requesting, begging, offering, inviting and others.In studying pragmatics, we
focus on how to utter a speech, so the hearer can interpret its meaning.
J.R. Searle 1965:105 states:“Behind the word, there is a hidden meaning we want to convey.” He states that on the utterance has two kinds of meaning, i.e. propositional meaning
and illocutionary meaning. Propositional meaning is a basic literal meaning of the utterance which is conveyed by the particular words and a structure which the utterance contains while
illocutionary meaning is the hidden meaning or the effect of the utterance or written text has on the hearer or reader.
When a speaker says “can you take the rubbish outside?” to his maid, It is more than just a question of the ability of the maid whether she is strong enough to take the rubbish outside, but
it is a kind of command that is uttered in such away.
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Semantically, we may interpret the utterance as the act of questioning, but we can interpret it as an act of ordering pragmatically. The example above is a kind of illocutionary act
that may be concluded that in language there should be an act can be performed. So, the sentence “can you take the rubbish outside?” contains at least two acts, i.e. requesting and ordering.
Illocutionary act is an act performed in saying something. It is something the speaker intends to do in making the utterance. This act is performed within the full control of the speaker
and it is the evident after the utterance is made. The illocutionary act is carried out by speaker in making an utterance’s significance within a conventional system of social intention.
It is important to understand the meaning of someone utterances, so both the speaker and the hearer understand each other and they can communicate well. There will be
misunderstanding if the hearer can not get the meaning of the speaker utterances. For example, when someone says “do that again, and I’ll kick you”, it means that the speaker doesn’t try to
make a request to do something, but he tries to make a threat in order to stop what the hearer do. In case of this situation, the hearer should be able to understand the meaning of the
speaker utterances to avoid the misunderstanding. J.R. Searle in Said 1997 categorizes the types of illocutionary acts into five categories.
1. Representatives, Which commits the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition paradigm cases:
asserting, concluding; 2. Directives,
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Which are attempted by the speaker to get the addressee to do something paradigm cases: requesting, questioning;
3.Commissives, Which commits the speaker to some future course of action paradigm cases: promising,
threatening, offering; 4. Expressive,
Which expresses a psychological state paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing, welcoming and congratulating;
5. Declarations, Which effects immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tends to rely
on elaborate extra linguistic institution paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying and firing from employment.
This is the reason why this topic is chosen and needed to be discussed. This topic, an analysis of Students’ Speech Act At Faculty of Cultural Studies Canteen Of University of Sumatera
Utarawill be analyzed to find out the type of speech act whether To find the meaning of the speaker to analysis the meaning of the speaker.