DIRECTIVE ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS IN THE YOUNG VICTORIA MOVIE
on
DIRECTIVE ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS IN THE YOUNG VICTORIA
MOVIE
Novita Mulyana
Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra dan Budaya, Universitas Udayana
Abstrak
Tindak ilokusi direktif bertujuan untuk membuat pendengar melakukan sesuatu untuk pembicara. Untuk mendapatkan tujuan dari sebuah komunikasi, seseorang perlu memperhatikan kesantunan dalam mengujarkan sesuatu, termasuk tindak ilokusi direktif. Studi ini di lakukan untuk mengindentifikasi tindak ilokusi direktif dan aplikasi strategi kesantunan di dalammya dengan menggunakan sebuah film berjudul “The Young Victoria”. Hasil dari studi ini menunjukkan bahwa keenam tipe tindak ilokusi direktif yang diajukan oleh Bach dan Harnish (1979) terdapat dalam film ini. Sebagian besar dari ujaran tersebut merupakan tindak tutur langsung. Selain itu, keempat strategi kesantunan milik Brown dan Levinson (1987) yaitu “bald on record”, “positive politeness”, “negative politeness”, dan “off record strategy” digunakan dalam mengujarkan tindak ilokusi direktif dengan “bald on record strategy” sebagai strategi kesantunan yang paling sering digunakan.
Kata kunci : ujaran, tindak ilokusi direktif, strategi kesantunan
Directive illocutionary acts is one of five basic classification of illocutionary act proposed by Searle (1976). It is aimed to get the hearer to do something for the speaker. In real life situation, several factors can contribute a great influence to the way people deliver their utterance. One of the considerations of choosing appropriate way to say something is politeness. Most of the times, in uttering directive illocutionary acts, people also consider politeness strategies according to the purpose or goal of interaction. The relation between directive illocutionary acts with politeness strategy can be seen for instance, when a boss commanded his maid to open a door, the boss preferred to use imperative Open the door! expression instead of the more polite one such as Could you please open the door? The awareness of status distance between the speaker and the hearer would mostly influence the type and the way the speaker uttered his utterance. From the example above it can be seen that the boss commanded his maid by a direct
speech act. His authority over the hearer allows him not to redress the expression to satisfy the hearer’s face. In other words, he used bald on record strategy. Here it can be seen that politeness strategy could bear a close relationship with directive illocutionary acts. Based on this background, a study entitled Directive Illocutionary Acts in The Young Victoria Movie was conducted.
There are two problems discussed in this study. Those are:
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1) What types of directive illocutionary acts are found in The Young Victoria movie?
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2) How are types of politeness strategies applied in directive illocutionary acts found in The Young Victoria movie?
This study was designed to fulfill the following aims:
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1) To identify the types of directive illocutionary acts found in The Young Victoria movie.
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2) To analyze the politeness strategies applied in directive illocutionary acts in The Young Victoria movie.
The data of this study were taken from a movie entitled The Young Victoria. It is a historical movie capturing the early life and reign of Queen Victoria. The movie was directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and written by Julian Fellowes. In collecting the data, documentary method and note taking technique were utilized. In analyzing the data, qualitative descriptive method was applied. The data were analyzed using Bach and Harnish’s (1979) classification on directive illocutionary act, Leech’s (1983) parameter of direct or indirect speech acts as well as Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness strategies.
Bach and Harnish (1979) classify six types of directive illocutionary acts, namely requestives, requirements, questions, prohibitives, permissives and advisories in their theory Taxonomy of Communicative Illocutionary Acts. Below are the analyses of directive illocutionary acts found in The Young Victoria movie.
Data
Woman : Mrs. Melbourne!
Melbourne : Good God! What are we coming to!
Victoria : Who was it? I didn’t see
Melbourne : The Duchess of Montrose. That’s the end of her career at court, I hope.
Victoria : If I ban everyone who thinks me wrong, you and I will be alone in the ballroom. (Fellowes, 2007:74)
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(1) Analysis of Directive Illocutionary Acts
The utterance in bold in the conversation is classified as requestives type of directive illocutionary acts. According to Bach and Harnish (1979), requestives is the type of directive illocutionary acts which expresses the desire of the speaker to get the hearer to do something. The conversation above occurred when both of the participants, Victoria and Melbourne, were watching an opera. In uttering his utterance he expressed his desire to get the hearer, Victoria, banning the woman who shouted from the court. In this case, he requested the hearer to do the action. Seen from the syntactic structure of the utterance, it is in declarative form. Meanwhile, according to Leech (1983:114), the syntactic structure which mostly assumed to manifest a directive directly is imperative. It means that the utterance uttered by Melbourne is an indirect speech act.
In the aspect of politeness, the utterance is identified applying off record strategy. According to Brown and Levinson (1987:216), off record strategy is done by leaving number of interpretation in the utterance and let the hearer interpret the intended meaning of the speaker by making some inference to
recover the fact intended. The speaker in this conversation invited his hearer to search for an interpretation that relevant by stating something implicitly. It means that he used give hint strategy in off record strategy.
Data
Stockmar : Favourite novels?
Albert : Err…. (He starts to answer in German)
Stockmar : English! Always English!
Albert : She hasn’t read many novels. They were forbidden until last year.(Fellowes, 2007:14)
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(1) Analysis of Directive Illocutionary Act
The utterance in bold in the conversation above is classified as requirements. In this type of directive illocutionary acts proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979:47), the hearer takes the utterance which is uttered by the speaker as a sufficient reason to do an action. The conversation occurred between Stockmar and Albert. It was started by Stockmar who gave Albert question about Victoria’s favorite novel. The intended meaning of Stockmar’s utterance is to instruct which belongs to the class of requirements. Seen from the syntactic structure, it is in the form of imperative. Based on Leech’s parameter on direct or indirect speech act (1983:114) which shows that the syntactic structure which manifest directive directly is imperative, the utterance uttered by Stockmar is classified as a direct speech act.
In the aspect of politeness, the utterance uttered by Stockmar applies bald on record strategy. Bald on record strategy is politeness strategy in which the speaker expresses his intended meaning directly to the hearer. Stockmar was ordered by the King of Belgium, Albert’s uncle, to teach Albert everything about Victoria. In other words, Stockmar utterance is task oriented. According to Brown and Levinson (1987:56), when the focus of the interaction is task oriented, like Stockmar’s utterance in the conversation above, face redness may be felt to irrelevant.
Data
Victoria : Where’s the duchess?
Footman : In the drawing room, Your Royal Highness(Fellowes, 2007:8)
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(1) Analysis of Directive Illocutionary Acts
The utterance uttered by Victoria is classified into question type of directives. Bach and Harnish (1979) state that question is a special case of requirements, in which the required action for the hearer is to provide the speaker some information. In this case, Victoria requested her hearer to provide her some information about her mother. Seen from the syntactic structure, it is in the form of interrogative. Leech’s (1983:114) on his parameter of direct or indirect speech act states that interrogative is the syntactic structure assumed to manifest a question directly. It means, this utterance is a direct speech act.
In the aspect of politeness, the utterance applies bald on record strategy. Victoria is a queen and she has greater power and social status compared to the hearer, the Footman. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), in the case of the existence of power or status differences between the participants, in which the speaker status or power is higher than the hearer, the speaker does not have to redness the expression in order to satisfy the hearer’s face. As conclusion, Victoria’s utterance is classified as bald on record strategy particularly the power difference between speaker and hearer strategy.
5.4 Prohibitives
Data
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Duchess of Kent |
: I want to go in! |
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Footman |
: I beg your pardon, Ma’am, but her majesty is with the Prime Minister and cannot be disturbed. |
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Duchess of Kent |
: That won’t apply to her mother! |
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Footman |
: I’m very sorry, Ma’am.(Fellowes, 2007:56) |
The conversation above occurred when Duchess of Kent wanted to get into Victoria’s room while she was having a serious conversation with the Prime Minister. Prohibitives is type of requirements that require the hearer not do a certain thing (Bach and Harnish, 1979:47). In this case, the Footman required the Duchess to not enter the room. The syntactic structure of the utterance is declarative. Meanwhile, according to Leech’s parameter on direct or indirect speech act (1983:114), imperative is the syntactic structure which assumed manifest directive directly. It means that the utterance is an indirect speech act.
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(2) Analysis of Politeness Strategy Applied in the Directive Illocutionary Acts
In the aspect of politeness, the utterance applies negative politeness strategy. In order to satisfy the hearer face, the speaker, in this case Footman apologized to the hearer, the Duchess which is aimed to forbid the hearer to enter the room. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), by apologizing, the speaker can indicate his reluctance to impinge on hearer’s negative face.
Data
Victoria : Thank you for being my messenger. I only hope I’ve given him enough detail. You can fill in anything I’ve missed.
Albert : He takes a great interest in you (Fellowes, 2007:62)
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(1) Analysis of Directive Illocutionary Acts
The conversation occurred when Victoria handed Albert a letter which was addressed to King Leopold. In permissives, the hearer believes that the speaker’s utterance entitles him to do an action (Bach and Harnish, 1979). In expressing the utterance, Victoria permitted Albert to fill in more information in her letter to the King. Seen from the syntactic structure, it is declarative. However, according to Leech’s (1983:114) parameter on direct or indirect speech act, the syntactic structure which is assumed to manifest directive directly is imperative. It means that the utterance is an indirect speech act.
Victoria’s utterance in the conversation above uses positive politeness strategy.In uttering her utterance, Victoria used Be Optimistic strategy in Positive Politeness strategies to show that their close relationship could make things like fill in details in her letter can be taken for granted by Albert.
Data
Melbourne : Try to rest before the ball.
Victoria : I will since I firmly intend to dance until dawn. (Fellowes, 2007:60-61)
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(1) Analysis of Directive Illocutionary Acts
The conversation occurred when Melbourne saw Victoria bathing her dog before her coronation day. The utterance was aimed to advice Victoria to take a rest before the ball. The utterance is classified into advisories. In this type of directives, the speaker expresses an utterance which is not the desire that the hearer do a certain action but rather the belief that doing the action is a good idea that is in the hearer’s interest (Bach and Harnish, 1979). The utterance is in the form of imperative which is the syntactic structure that is assumed to manifest directive directly (Leech, 1983:114). It means that it is a direct speech act.
In the conversation above, Melbourne gave Victoria advice that shows he cared to Victoria’s health. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), in the case that the speaker conveys that he cares about the hearer, no redness is required. Sympathetic advice as expressed by Melbourne as the speaker in the conversation above may be baldly on record
After conducting the analysis, some conclusions can be drawn. All types of directive illocutionary acts proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979) are found in The
Young Victoria movie. They are requestives, requirements, questions, prohibitives, permissives, and advisories. Questions is the type of directives which most frequently occurred. Most of the directives found are direct speech act. In the aspect of politeness, four types of politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) were found. Those are bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record strategy. The mostly used strategy is bald on record strategy.
Bach, K. 1979. Linguistic Communication and Speech Act.Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press
Brown, P & Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness :Some Universal in Language Usage. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Fellowes, J. 2007. The Young Victoria.Downloaded from: http://www.pages .drexel.edu/~ ina22/splaylib/Screenplay-Young_Victoria,%20The.pdf
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London:Longman
Searle, John. R. 1976. A Classification of Illocutionary Act.Cambridge : Cambridge University Press
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