25 toorestall intervention. If intervention in some activity is anticipated, identify, or
justify the planned activity, the effect is a prohibition, e.g. “That’s mine” said as
speaker grabs toy. 2 N Neutralize anticipate an obstacle to the hearer‟s
cooperation and neutralize it, e.g. “I’ll give you a dollar for it”. Three strategies
related to obstacle neutralization approach: a N.1. Anticipate counterarguments: if the hearer may have reasons not to cooperate with the goal, identify a way to
mitigate such obstacle and inform the hearer, e.g. “If I can have a kitten I’ll take
care of it all by myself.” b N.2. Modify cost: If the cost of a goal or activity is high, find a way of neutralizing it by minimize cost, e.g. ask for small amount,
provide compensation, e.g. “If you give me this for a while, you can have this for
a while ”, or increase cost of noncompliance, e.g. threaten hearer, “If you don’t
give it to me, I’ll take my truck back” c N.3. Change activity context: If the
framing situation or current activity is not favorable to obtaining the goal, invoke a different situation or activity, e.g. a child denied access to a toy may suggest a
game or activity in which the use of the toy is routine. 3 G Goal make the hearer awake of the desired goal situation or some aspect of it and hope the hearer
brings it voluntarily, e.g. “Do we have any candy?” asked when child knows
“we” do.
B. Related Studies
There are several studies that related to this study. First is Speech Acts by Mother and Child: Determining Their Nature and Form by Josie Bernicot, Judith
Comeau, and Helga Feider 1993. The goal of the study is to determine to what extent the psychological, social, and cultural features of the communication
26 situation affect the production of speech acts during an interaction between an
adult and a child. Variations in the nature of the speech acts produced assertive, directive, expressive, and commissive and in their linguistic form imperative,
declarative, interrogative, and exclamative are studied in relation to three variables describing the communication situation: a a psychological variable, the
mother‟s child-raising style coercive or inductive which was assessed using a questionnaire on parental control behavior b a social variable, the social role of
the speaker mother or child; and c a cultural variable, the origin of the dialogue partners French or Canadian. For each cultural sample, 15-minute dialogues
were recorded while 10 pairs of mothers in interaction with their 5 and 6 year old daughters performed a task involving drawing on a computer. The results suggest
that for children between the ages of 5 and 6, the production of speech acts is mainly controlled by the social characteristics of the communication situation
rather than by its psychological and cultural features. Mothers appear instead to be sensitive to all three kinds of factors. Moreover, the four types of speech acts were
found to differ in their frequency of occurrence, linguistic form, and reaction to the psychological, social, and cultural characteristics of the communication
situation. The study suggests that the effects of these characteristics on speech act production are not uniform, but vary according to the index under consideration.
The second study is Children’s Pragmatic Competence: A Case Study of
English Speech Acts Performed by American Children by Toshihiko Suzuki 2010. It attempts to demonstrate the pragmatic competence of American
elementary school children who speak English as their first language. The data
27 was taken from pupils aged 8
– 10 in San Francisco in March 2010. It was designed to reveal native English
speaking children‟s pragmatic ability to realize their intentions verbally in the form of speech acts, and to consider its significance
in human language acquisition in pragmatic development, also to apply the research results to English Language Teaching in Japan. The data consist of six
English speech acts, i.e. complimenting, requesting, thanking, inviting, apologizing, comforting, performed orally by children in role-play with puppets
and then transcribed for the examination of their linguistic features in detail. The finding of the study is confirming that positive direction strategies were usually
used in the face enhancing acts, i.e. apologizing, complimenting, and thanking, and negative direction strategies dominated in face threatening acts, i.e. inviting
and requesting. The features are commonly found in adults‟ interaction, therefore it indicates that people at different ages are following general rules for performing
speech acts. The third study is Understanding Request by Susan Ervin-Tripp, Amy
Strage, Martin Lampert, and Nancy Bell 1986. It is intended to understand the extent to which interlocutors actually rely on linguistic information, contextual aid
and situational knowledge to understand request. The data are taken from 11 three-years-old, 10 five-years-old, and 11 seven-years-old native speakers of
English. The finding is that listeners can interpret contextual demand without explicit language. Contextual information, in many cases, is enough to get the
listeners compliance.
28 The current study on respect and obedience is aimed at finding the linguistic
features and the strategies used. It is more or less similar to the studies mentioned, however it is limited to the act of gaining respect and obedience.
C. Theoretical Framework
