Watching and Making the Video Transcript
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intonation. The researcher found that there were 252 utterances categorized as question. The numbers for each category were explained in table 4.1 below:
Table 4.1 Utterances Appearances Based on Its Type
No. Type of Question
Number of Appearances
Percentages 1.
YesNo 148
58,73 2.
WH-question 59
23,41 3.
Tag question 4.
Echo question 2
0,79 5.
Another type of question 1
17,06 - Ellipsis
29 - Raising intonation
13 Total
252 100
By observing the data which consists of all questions, it can be concluded that the conversations are having ill-sequence.
This research was addressing the notion about question-answer pair sequence. An answer was assumed to be in form of declarative sentence. There
was believed that the utterances syntactical form was responsible for binding the conversation coherency. However, there are some objections to the notion. First is
that answerhood is a complex property composed of sequential location and topical coherence across two utterances Levinson, 1984: p. 293. It is not easily
determined by the utterances type. Moreover, Levinson 1984, Coulthard 1977, as well as Labov and Fanshel 1977 state that the coherency of a conversation
sequence does not lie on the sentence category. In addition, Levinson 1984 suggests going deeper into the
“level of speech acts to make the sequence described straightforwardly
” p.289.
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This research attempts to reveal the utterances primary act. Leech 1983 and Levinson 1984 object to the notion of form-to-force relation between
utterances said in question and act of questioning in particular. This research employed Searle‟s Indirect Speech acts in which he takes advantage of Grice‟s
Cooperative Principles. It assumes that the utterances have two speech acts, literal and nonliteral. This research did not only analyze the utterance form. It focused on
the conversation context, since the utterance relied heavily on context. The result suggested that many utterances in form of question did not
perform the act of questioning. It verified the notion that a speech acts or an illocutionary act can be performed through different linguistic expressions. The
questions in the conversation were able to perform act from the five categories of speech acts proposed by Searle. The finding can be seen in the table 4.2 which
presents the detailed act performed in each category by the utterances. To perform a specific act in a category, the utterances are required to fulfill
the felicity conditions. According to Searle 1965, felicity conditions are some conditions to be fulfilled so that an act can be performed successfully. Sincerity
condition and essential condition of an act are synonymous with psychological state and illocutionary point for each category. Thus, each act could be associated
to a group in Searle‟s typology. Propositional content for each act is different.
Therefore, preparatory conditions specifically suggest the condition of which act required to successfully perform the act. As the synonymous condition for each
category could be identified, the analyses would categorize the act respectively in each category.