CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of Analysis Language
is one of the most important aspects in human daily life. It is used as a means to communicate with other
people. Language, both spoken and written
is used by human being to express his thought, ideas and emotion by using sounds, gestures and signals in various
purposes and reasons. Language is so essential
for everyone, it cannot be separated from human’s life because it is used to interact to each other.
Hartley (1982: 11) states: “language is a means of communication. To
communicate by speaking is not a
gratuitous act; it is purposeful, and thus language has an instrument aspect. Communication can only take
place successfully of the means of
communication is agreed by its users, and thus language has a conventional aspect. Society as we know
would not exist without language, and
indeed for some it is a defining characteristic of human race itself, for exceeding in sophistication
of any animal communication.” Pei (1996) as quoted in Yasin (2008: 6) states
that language is a system of communication
by sound operating through the organ of speech and hearing, among members a given community, and using
vocal symbols possessing arbitrary
conventional meaning.
Those definitions above show howlanguage
isuseful in human’s life, it is emphasized
that there is a conventional meaning which leads to an understanding in a communication, that the speaker and the
listener must mutually catch the meaning
of the speech so that the communication runs cooperatively and there is no misunderstanding towards the delivered
messages. A cooperative communication
does not require only the linguistic knowledge of the speaker and the listener but it also requires the
contextual knowledge, in which role is very important to understand the meaning of the
speech that being uttered.
Stefanie Jannedy et. al (1994: 227) state “to
fully understand the meaning of a
sentence, we must understand the context in which it is uttered. Pragmatics concerns itself with how people use language
within a context and why they use language
in particular ways. This unit examines how speaker and hearer affect the ways in which language is used to perform
various function.” Austin (1962) in
Fasold (2006: 162) points out that when people use language, they are performing a kind of action
that is called speech acts. The use of
the term speech act covers ‘actions’
such as requesting, commanding, questioning,
and informing. In studying pragmatics, we concern on how to utter a speech so that the listener can interpret the
meaning that is conveyed by the speaker.
According to Austin utterance can be analyzed
as a speech act. There are two kinds of
utterances, performative utterance and constative utterance. A performative utterance is one that actually
describes the act that it performs, i.e it performs some acts and simultaneously
describes that act. For example “I promise to be there tomorrow” is performative because
in saying it the speaker actually does
what the utterance describes, i.e. he promises to the listener to be there the next day. That is, the utterance both a
description and a promise. While a constative
utterance is one which makes an assertion (it is often the utterance of a declarative sentence) but it is not a
performative. For example “I think I was wrong” is a constative utterance because it is
only describes the mental state.
Austin (1962) proposed three levels of speech
acts: locutionary act, illocutionary
act, and perlocutionary act. Locutionary act is the content of the utterance itself, while the illocutionary act
is the meaning intended by the speaker, and
perlocutionary act is the interpretation of the message by the listener.
The source of the data in this thesis is the
script of film, entitled The Proposal, which
has been taken from the internet.
The Proposal is a 2009 American
romantic comedy film directed by Anne Fletcher and starred by Sandra Bullock (Margaret Tate) and Ryan Reynolds
(Andrew Paxton). The screenplay was
written by Pete Chiarelli. This film was released on June 19, 2009 in North America by Touchstone Pictures.
The writer wants to discuss about the speech
act among the main characters of The
Proposal and to find out whether the theory of pragmatics can be analyzed in this film script such as in our
daily utterances. The writer chooses the
movie as the object of the research because the conversation of the main characters represents our daily conversation.
In each conversation contains the three
categories of speech act, it is why the writer wants to analyze the conversation and then classify each utterance
to the categories of speech acts and to
find the types of illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act in the film
script of The Proposal.
1.2
Problem of Analysis Based on the background above, this thesis is meant to
analyze the speech act in Touchstone
film script entitled The Proposal. This thesis discusses the following problems, they are: 1. What types of illocutionary act are found in
The Proposal? 2. Are there any perlocutionary acts within the
illocutionary acts in The Proposal? 1.3 Objective of Analysis The objectives of
the thesis are not much different from the problems and they are: 1.
To find out the types of illocutionary act in The Proposal.
2. To
find out if there are the perlocutionary act within the illocutionary act in The Proposal.
1.4 Scope of the Analysis This analysis is
based on pragmatics that is to discuss the speech act on the Touchstone Film’s The Proposal. There are three
important categories of speech acts,
namely; locution, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. In this analysis, the
writer would like to focus on the
illocutionary act and perlocutionary act, since the whole of the script are included the
locutionary act. The writer limits the analysis on the types of illocutionary act which
consists of declarative, representative, expressive, rogative, commissive, and
directive, and also the perlocutionary act among the main characters. The object of the
analysis of this thesis is only the dialogue
of the two main characters in The Proposal, Margareth Tate and Andrew Paxton.
1.5 Method of Analysis In doing this thesis,
the writer applies library research method. This method is carried out by reading, collecting
and observing the data and information
from textbooks, articles, thesis and other sources related to the topic.
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