CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study

  

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

  Pragmatics is one of the main areas of linguistics study that look at the knowledge we use both toextract meaning when we hear or read, and to convey meaning when we speak or write. Pragmatics is a study of speaker meaning (Yule 1996:3). Pragmatics, as the branch of linguisticsis concerned with theuse of these tools in meaningful communication. Pragmatics is about theinteraction of semantic knowledge with our knowledge of the world,taking into account contexts of use, Griffiths (2006:1). Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). This study also involving the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influencing the things they said. In this case, the speaker must be able to organize what they want to say in accordance with the people they are talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances.

  Speech acts is a part of pragmatics discussion which relates to a certain sentence and utterance that has a certain acts within it. Speech acts is an utterance that serves a function in communication. Speech acts are the part of our daily life whether in spoken language or writing. By speaking a language, we will perform the speech acts such as giving commands, making statements, asking questions or making promises. In other words, we can do actions or things by using the speech.

  In the most basic terms, speech acts involve the act of verbally stating something, what one does while stating it, and what one hopes to accomplish by stating it. In studying speech acts, the understanding and acquaintance of context in which they are performed are often important for decoding the whole utterance and its proper meaning. There are various classifications of speech acts that include propositional, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.

  In the pragmatic’s theory, there are three types of acts, namely: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary act. These three types are called speech acts.

  Locutionary act is performing the act of saying something. Illocutionary act is performing the act in saying something. Perlocutionary is performing an act by saying something. For the example, locutionary, s says to h that X; illocutionary, in saying X, s asserts that p; perlocutionary, by saying X, s convinces h that P. Here, the X is the certain words spoken with a certain sense and reference. Speech acts is the centre of the pragmatics. Speech acts is the study of how to do things with words.

  Actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts (Yule 1996:47). In an effort to express themselves, people do not only produce utterance that contains grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterance. Commonly, we know the types of utterance namely: requesting, ordering, begging, inviting, offering, complaining, apologizing, promising, and the others.

  Illocutionary act is an act that performed in saying something or in other words, the illocutionary acts is the action that intended by the speakers or the writers.

  The illocutionary acts is performed via the communicative force of an utterance (Yule: 1996:48). There is an intention of the speaker or the writer in making that utterance or sentence. Illocutionary acts are considered the core of the theory of speech acts. As already explained above, the illocutionary act is an action that performed by the speaker in producing a given utterance. The illocutionary act always related to the speaker’s intentions, such as stating, questioning, promising, requesting, giving commands, threatening for instance. Illocutionary acts also can be found in the written form such as books, magazines, or in the literary works such as play, novel, and short story.

  Some linguists have attempted to classify illocutionary acts into a number of categories or types. Leech (1983: 205) classifies illocutionary acts into four, they are: assertive, directive, commissive, and expressive. Yule ( 1996: 48) categorizes the illocutionary acts into five main categories, they are: declarations, representatives, expressive, directives, and commissives. Searle (1979:13-23) categorizes them into five main categories, they are:assertive, directives, commissives, expressive, and declarations. The main five categories would show the intention or action of the writer or the speaker for the reader. For example, in Discover Magazine April 2013 edition page 7,

  (1) ‘So please take a minute to share your thoughts and suggestion by email’ The example above is the illocutionary act namely the directive type that meant for begging or requesting the help from the reader to send their feedback through the utterance above. As Yule (1996: 48) explains that directive types are the kind of speech acts that speakers or writers use to get someone else to do something. This type can be command, order, request, or suggestion. The example above is an illocutionary act because there is an action namely the action of requesting, performed by the utterance. Another example, in Discover magazine April 2013 edition page 7,

  (2) “Thankfully, as you pointed out, the medical community is dropping the ‘us versus them’ attitude toward bacteria”. This is also the example of illocutionary type namely the expressive of thanking. Yule (1996:48) explains that expressives are those kinds of speech that state what the speaker feels. This type expresses the psychological state and can be statement of pleasure, pain, likes, dislike, joy, or sorrow. The person above is stating his/her feeling and he/she is thanking. The person above performs the thanking action by using an utterance as stated above.

  Discover Magazine is an AmericanThis monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 bybut more detailed and science-oriented than magazines likeThe popular science in Discover magazine would be an interesting topics for the reader because many real fact shown from our daily activities. Nowadays, this magazine already distributed worldwide. This magazine provides more useful and popular scientific articles that are interesting to be read.

  Not only science, technology, and the future also discussed on this magazine. Discover Magazine April 2013 edition would be the object of this thesis because on this edition, there are many topics about the natural environment and many solutions for solving environment problems and also indirectly asked us to protect the natural environment around us. This edition would be an interesting object because environment is related to our daily life.

  From this scientific articles can be found many illocutionary cases and would be an interesting topic because the role of illocutionary acts would be shown through the articles. Based on the explanations above, the Illocutionary acts found in Discover Magazine April 2013 edition would be the focus of this thesis. Discover Magazine April 2013 edition become the object of this thesis because there are many illocutionary acts happen in this magazine although it is a scientific magazine. By using illocutionary, we could ask someone to do some action or we can express an action just by using an utterance. Illocutionary become the most interesting topic compared with locutionary and perlocutionary. Locutionary is just an ordinary act without any certain action intended meanwhile the perlocutionary is an action of asking someone to do something by using utterances or sentences. As we see, Illocutionary act is the act that performed through utterances and it is completely different with the locutionary and perlocutionary act. Illocutionary act become an interesting topic to be analyzed because we may learn to perform many actions just by using the utterances or sentences.

1.2 Problems of The Study

  The problem of the study is an important thing for the thesis in order that the researcher will not get lost in discussing the main topic of the thesis. Based on the background above, the problems of the study of this thesis are formed as bellow: 1.

  What types of illocutionary acts that are found in some selected Discover Magazine’s articles? 2. What are the intentions of each illocutionary acts performed in some selected Discover magazine’s articles?

  3. What is the most dominant type of illocutionary acts found in some selected Discover magazine’s articles?

  1.3 Objective of the study

  The objective of this research is to improve the student’s knowledge about the illocutionary acts. Discussing about illocutionary acts, there are many types of it.

  As stated at the problems of the study above, below are the objectives of the study to answer the problems of the analysis namely:

  1. To find out the number and types of illocutionary acts in some selected Discover Magazine’s articles.

  2. To interpret the intention of each illocutionary acts found in some selected Discover Magazine’s articles.

  3. To determine the most dominant type of illocutionary acts in Discover Magazine’s some selected articles.

  1.4 Scope of the Study

  It is necessary to limit the analysis to avoid the vagueness since the object of speech acts is too wide. The analysis would be limited only on the illocutionary acts.

  There are only five types of illocutionary will be discussed on this thesis namely: assertive, expressive, directives, declarative, and commissives. Therefore, the illocutionary act types and the intention of utterance in Discover Magazine would be the focus of this thesis. The Discover Magazine on April 2013 edition would be the object of this thesis. This analysis would be valid only for the Discover Magazine on April 2013 edition. The object of the analysis is limited only for five selected articles. Through this scope of analysis, it will help the readers to figure out the major problems and ideas properly.

1.5 Significance of the Study

  From this study, this analysis hopefully gives contribution in developing the linguistics studies especially about illocutionary acts. This study hopefully could give a worth significances such as: 1.

  This study will help the students’ competence in understanding the illocutionary acts.

  2. To enlarge the reader’s knowledge about speech acts namely illocutionary acts.

  3. To add more references for the students that want to do the next research.