4827270-9163050CHAPTER IINTRODUCTIONBackground of the StudySpeech act has been become influential field to be studied as a part of pragmatics in which it concerned the use of language in a communication.

In relation to the study of language, Searle (as cited in Justová, 2006) points out that speaking a language is performing speech act. It means that when someone saying something, the utterances they carried out is containing speech act. Speech act is the study of how speaker and the hearer use language (Yule,1996). It studies how someone expresses something like apologizing, instructing, threatening, explaining, declaring and so forth. To put it simply, speech act is a study of way people act through their speech.The basic concept of speech act theory was initiated by Austin in 1962. He outlined his theory of speech act as performative language in which to say something is to do something (Austin, 1962).

Further, he introduced the basic terms and areas to study and distinguish speech acts on three levels, they are 1)locutionary act, the performance of utterance with the actual or literal meaning of the utterances itself; 2)illocutionary act, the utterances which has intended meaning of the speaker; and 3)perlocutionary act, the effect of illocutionary act which gets the hearer to do what the speaker said. 35991802886075101This theory later developed by Searle in 1969. His work differs from Austin’s in several aspect whereas he was somewhat sceptical about the distinction to the description of illocutionary act in which it is carried the intention of the speaker. Searle (as cited in Mey, 2001) defined speech act as the basic unit of linguistic communication in which it is not supposed to be symbols, words, or sentence but rather the production of those symbols, words or sentences in performing a speech. In addition, he introduced the terms of indirect illocutionary act where the speaker communicates to the hearer by way of relying on their mutually shared background information while the hearer used their rationality and inference more than what is actually said.

Otherwise stated that the utterances cannot be interpreted only from the structure of the form of utterance itself but also with understanding the context in which speech act is being performed to get a proper meaning. Shiddiqui (2018) also defines speech act as linguistic phenomenon which deals with social actions whenever the speaker says something within a speific context. It can be concluded that speech act is an action of saying something in which the speaker convey his or her intended meaning through their utterances in a certain context so that the hearer is expected to do what have been said by the speaker.Again, referred to indirect illocutionary act, Searle (as cited in Yule, 1996) has set up five types classifications of speech act, they are representative, directive, commisive, expressive, and declaration. Representative speech act states what the speaker believes to be the case or not such as stating, describing, and asserting.

Directive speech act is the utterrances attempt by the speaker to get the hearer to do something such as ordering, requesting and commanding. In commisive speech act, the speaker commits himself or herself to the performance of action in the future such as predicting, promising, and threatening. Expressive speech act states what the speaker feels like pains, pleasures and likes or dislikes. Declaration speech act is the speaker’s utterances which brings a change to the world such as baptizing, divorcing, and declaring a war.

In this research, the writer chose to study speech act as since it concerns what the speaker intends and what the speaker wants to achieve by uttering something. Speech act can normally be found in drama conversation. For instance, conversation in drama can be a good example of speech act since it represents the complex case of speech act carried out by the characters. Unlike short story and novel, drama interprets its intended meaning through the characters in the form of dialogues and stage direction. Drama script, in this case, become essential part in drama as it is containing dialogues uttered by the characters on the drama.

Therefore, related to Searle’s speech act theory and his five classification of speech act, the writer choose Another Gift drama script written by Alex Broun as the object of the research. Alex Broun, an Australian writer who is famous for his 10-minutes playwright, produced Another Gift in 2006. The characters in the drama script is naturalistic character-based which is perfect for youth characters. Besides, this drama script presents speech acts as language phenomenon. The characters’ utterances become the main focus of the analysis because their utterances expressed communicative purposes in which speech act is being performed.

There were a lot of researcher that has been conducted research about speech act. Muhartoyo and Kristiani (2013) conducted research about directive speech act in “Sleeping Beauty” movie. Then Putri (2013) analyzed in the script of drama play “Cate Blanchett Wants to be My Friend on Facebook”, and Wirastri and Ghazali (2017) conducted research that analyzed speech act used by Mia Dolan in “La La Land” movie.Although in the previous study has been investigated about speech act, but there has been very little examined the drama script. Therefore, the writer proposes the research entitled The Analysis of Speech Act in Alex Broun’s “Another Gift” Drama Script. The aims of this study is to analyze the types of speech acts which occurs in the drama script.

Besides, the writer also tries to explore the function of every speech act carried out by the characters’ utterances in Another Gift drama script.Scope and LimitationScopeScope of this research is analysing speech act in the drama script based on speech act theory proposed by Searle in 1969.LimitationTo limit the broadener discussion, the writer focused on analysing the speech act on the characters’ utterances in the drama script. It is used to find the types of speech act carried out by the characters (representatives, directives, commisives, expressives, and declarations) and to find out the function of characters’ utterances in the drama script.

The writer limits the data on “Another Gift” drama script by Alex Broun.Formulation of the ProblemThe writer has formulated the research questions as follows :What types of speech acts carried out by the characters in the drama script?What are the functions of characters’ utterances in the drama script that related to types of speech acts? Objective of the StudyIn relation to the above questions, the researcher intend to :Find out the types of speech acts which are carried out by the characters in the drama scriptFind out the functions of characters’ utterances in the drama script that related to types of speech actsSignificance of the StudyTheoriticallyThe result of this research is expected to contribute the development of pragmatic study, especially on how to analyze the speech act in the drama script.PracticallyFor English TeachersEnglish teachers may use the result of this research as the source of teaching materials in pragmatics fields, especially about speech acts.For English StudentsThe result of this research is expected to help English students in understanding speech acts.

For Future ResearchersThe research hopefully will give benefits for other researchers to conduct deeper research of related study. The result of this research can be used as references and additional information dealing with speech act.For General ReadersThe result of this research is expected to be useful for general reader in enriching the knowledge in pragmatics field especially about speech act in order to help them to communicate with other in a better way