ILLOCUTIONARY PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE IN O’NEIL’S BEYOND THE HORIZON
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ILLOCUTIONARY PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE IN O’NEIL’S BEYOND THE HORIZON
By:
NI NYOMAN ASTRINI UTAMI
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LETTERS AND CULTURE, UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
Abstrak
Judul studi ini adalah "Illocutionary Performative Utterance in O’neil’s Beyon the Horizon". Hal ini didasarkan pada pemahaman bahwa unit komunikasi linguistik adalah produksi simbol atau kata atau kalimat dalam kinerja bahasa , karena ketika pembicara berbicara sebuah bahasa , ia sedang melakukan tindak tutur yang mencakup semua tindakan dilakukan sesuai dengan aturan-aturan tertentu dalam komunikasi linguistik . Ada tiga poin yang dibahas dalam penelitian kualitatif ini meliputi jenis tindakan ilokusi yang ditemukan , klasifikasi ujaran performatif dan jenis ujaran tidak berterima dalam performatif ilokusi. Data penelitian ini dikumpulkan dari dialog-dialog drama yang berjudul Beyond the Horizon yang ditulis oleh dramawan Amerika Eugene O'Neill pada tahun 1920 .
Hasil analisis pertama menunjukkan bahwa ada empat dari lima jenis tindakan ilokusi yang ditemukan, yaitu representatives, directives, commisives dan expressive, sedangkan declarative tidak ditemukan dalam sumber data . Analisis kedua tentang ujaran performatif menunjukkan bahwa ada dua jenis tuturan performatif ditemukan, yaitu eksplisit dan implicit performatif. Analisis terakhir menunjukkan bahwa ada dua dari tiga jenis ujaran performatif yang tidak berterima, yaitu misexecutions dan abuse, sementara misinvocations tidak ditemukan dalam sumber data.
Kata kunci: tindakan ilokusi, ujaran performatif, ilokusi tidak berterima.
Austin (1962 and Searle (1976) believe that language is not only used to inform or to describe things, it is often used to “do things” or to perform acts. Just by saying
the utterance we can make someone do something, and these phenomena are called speech act which is part of pragmatic study. This study focuses on illocutionary performative utterance. As Austin (1962: 236) said, he isolates three basic senses in which in saying something one is doing something, and hence three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Among those all, illocutionary act is absolutely essential to any discussion of speech acts, and considers the illocutionary acts as the speech acts itself. It describes what the speaker (S) does in uttering (U) to the hearer (H) in the context (C). The notion of an illocutionary act is closely connected with Austin's doctrine of the so-called 'performative' and 'constative utterances': an utterance is "performative" just in case it is issued in the course of the "doing of an action" (1975), by which, again, Austin means the performance of an illocutionary act (Austin 1975). The data source were taken from a drama entitled Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O’Neil. The previous study from an undergraduate student has proven that it is very interesting to analyze the illocutionary acts within the drama as the reference, since it contains various expressions in the form of conversations (Ikayanti, 2010). Conducting research with the data source of drama has already been done, because it is very easy to find speech act in the conversation of drama. Austin in Oishi (2006;2) stated that in finding the intended meaning of an illocution one must look at the speech condition which underlies the speech act. The felicity condition concept, the concept which reveals whether the speech acts being performed is valid or not and evaluate the validity of speech by its conventionality, actuality and intentionality has not been analyzed in undergraduate thesis by the students of Udayana University (Yastini, 2012). In contrast to Yastini (2012) who have explored infelicitous illocution act, this study analyzed more specifically infelicitous illocutionary performatives utterance which the verb that makes it ‘performs’ something.
Based on discussion above, some problems can be formulated as follows:
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1) What are the types of illocutionary act found in O’neil’s Beyond the Horizon?
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2) What are the illocutionary performatives utterance found in O’neil’s Beyond the Horizon?
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3) What are the infelicitous illocutionary performatives utterance found in O’neil’s Beyond the Horizon?
Generally, the aim of conducting this study is to apply the pragmatic theory and another linguistic related theory and concept that have been learnt. Furthermore, the academic aim of conducting this research is to give contribution to the development of linguistic study. The research question which leads to the following specific purposes;
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1) To explain the types of illocutionary act found in O’neil’s Beyond the Horizon 2) To find out the illocutionary performative utterance found in O’neil’s Beyond the
Horizon
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3) To analyze the infelicitous illocutionary performative utterance found in O’neil’s Beyond the Horizon and what makes it infelicitous.
The data source of this study were taken from drama entitled Beyond the Horizon, a 1920 play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It was O'Neill's first full-length work and the winner of the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The data were collected by documentation method and the data was taken from the writing (dialogues of drama). The data were collected in order to find out the illocutionary performative utterance, the explanation and the infelicitous of the utterance. The
drama was chosen at random, not all of dialogues were analyzed. The sample of dialogue was taken by scanning those performative illocutions that can be classified as the infelicitous one. The data were collected in order to find out the illocutionary acts, the performative utterance and the infelicitous acts. As the data were analyzed descriptively, the samples were described clearly and thoroughly in order to find out the types of illocution, the performative utterance and the infelicitous illocutions.
Based on the theory proposed by Searle (1976), there are five types of illocutions; those are representatives, directives, commisives, expresives and declarations. Only four types were found in the dialogue of Beyond the Horizon.
The point of representative illocution found in the data showed the purpose to commit the speaker to the truth of expressed proposition (Searle, 1976). There are several types of representatives illocutions found in the dialogues of drama, such as complaining, claiming, stating and hypothesizing.
Based on Searle (1976) the point of directive illocution is attempted by the speaker to get the addressee to do something. In this research there are four members of directive class found, those are ordering, commanding, begging, and excusing.
The illocutionary point of expressive is to express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about a state of affair specified in the propositional content (Searle, 1976). Based on the explanation, Paradigmatic cases found in this research are apologizing, congratulating, thanking and regretting.
The Commissive illocutions have the purpose to commit the speaker to some future course of action (Searle, 1976). In this research there are five members of commissive class found, those are intending, promising, betting, threatening, and swearing.
After the types of illocutionary act, the researcher moved to analyze the type of performative of those illocutions type. The utterance can be classified into two types of performative; explicit and implicit performative based on Austin’s (1962) theory. a. Explicit performative utterance
An explicit performative clause contains a verb that names the illocutionary point of the utterance (Austin, 1962). For the speaker to make the illocutionary force explicit, she or he has to indicate the speech act involved by inserting the performative verb before the clause.
[Data 4 – page 848] I swear I’ll get out of bed every time you put me there.
The underline verb is the performative verb which is named the illocutionary point of the utterance and it is performed in present tense because the illocutionary act is defined on the moment of utterance. The subject of the utterance are conditioned by the fact that the speaker is agent for either him/herself or another, it can be seen at the used of first person ‘I’, whichever takes responsibility for enforcing the illocution described by the performative verb.
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b. Implicit performative utterance
[Data 25 – page 842]
I’ll prove to you the reading I’ve done can be put to some use
—► I promise that I’ll prove to you the reading I’ve done can be put to some use.
The example above is implicit, as what the speaker has in mind by saying it is not specifically indicated. Because of it implicitness, the sentence can be, depending on the paralinguistic or kinetic cues given by the speaker, and on the power or status relationship between the speaker and hearer, a warning, a command, a request or a piece of advice. There is no performative verb which spells out the illocutionary point of those utterances, and that makes the utterance ambiguous. If that implicit performatives are given performative verb and first subject (the speaker is an agent), it will make the utterances became explicit performative and the illocutionary point is clear.
The last analysis is about the infelicitous illocutionary performative utterance. Austin (1962) states that performatives were neither true nor false: instead, they were to be regarded as felicitous or infelicitous. Austin mentions that there are three types of infelicitous speech acts; those are misinvocations, misexecutions, and abuse. But in this research, only two types of infelicitous were found in data source; misexecutions and abuse.
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a. Misexecutions
[Data 28 – page 827]
RUTH : (Losing her temper). A good spanking’s what you need, my young lady – and you’ll get one from me if you don’t mind better, d’you hear? (Mary starts to whimper frightenedly).
This act happened when her two years old daughter, Mary was refused to be taken to bed. Ruth was never able to make her daughter to follow what she was saying and she was always scolding her daughter by giving her a spank if her daughter does not want to follow what she was saying. By looking at point (B.1), this uttered was a violation, because Mary as hearer was two years old and accepted a threatening from her mother by a spank; A good spanking’s what you need, my young lady – and you’ll get one from me if you don’t mind better, d’you hear? Ruth was not able to present herself as the speaker who uttered threat to the two years old child by a spank. Furthermore the violation also included B.2, in the point that Mary did not stop to refuse to be taken to bed and she was crying after Ruth threat her.
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b. Abuse
[Data 26 – page 820]
ROBERT : It’s horrible! I feel so guilty–to think that I should be the cause of your suffering, after we’ve been such pals all our lives. If I could have foreseen what’d happen, I swear to you I’d have never said a word to Ruth. I swear I wouldn’t have, Andy!
This act happened after Andrew told their family that he wanted to change Robert to go sailing with Uncle Dick and he told Robert the truth of his reason to go sailing. He loved Ruth and he cannot stay around Robert and Ruth and watch them together everyday while he was alone. In his utterance, Robert felt very guilty for having revealed his feelings to Ruth and he swore that he would not reveal his feelings to Ruth if he knew that the situation would be worse.
Based on point (Γ.1) and (Γ.2) which deals with intentionality of speech situation; the present speech situation is substantiated by the speaker’s associated intention and future responsibility expressed (Sbisa, 2002), [Data 26 – page 820] can be categorized into abuse, because the utterance of I swear to you I’d have never said a word to Ruth is the violation of those two points. It can be seen that the utterance would never happened because Robert as the speaker was already told Ruth about his feeling and the violation can be seen at the utterance before; If I could have foreseen what’d happen.
The first conclusion is there are four types of illocutionary acts found in O’neil’s Beyond the Horizon. This classification is based on the theory proposed by Searle (1976). Those are representatives, directives, expressive and commisives. The declarative act was not found in the dialogues as there are no speech situation and speech event that requires this illocutions.
The second conclusion is the utterance can be classified into two types of performative; explicit and implicit performative based on Austin’s (1962) theory. The explanation of Austin about explicit performative utterance contains a verb that names the illocutionary point of the utterance has been proved while the implicit performative utterance did not contain a verb that names the illocutionary point of the utterance. If those implicit performatives are given performative verb and first subject (the speaker is an agent), it will make the utterances become explicit performative and the illocutionary point is clear.
The last conclusion is there are two types of infelicitous found in the data source based on the felicity condition criteria proposed by Austin (1962); those are misexecutions and abuse. The misinvocations were not found in the dialogues as there are no illocutionary performative utterances that qualify as misinvocations.
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