Directness And Literalness Of Speech Acts In The Imitation Game Movie
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ISSN: 2302-920X
Jurnal Humanis, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya Unud
Vol 16.3 September 2016: 77 – 83
Directness And Literalness Of Speech Acts In The Imitation Game Movie
I Dewa Ayu Satria Dewi1*, I Nengah Sudipa2, Putu Weddha Savitri3 123English Department Faculty Of Arts Udayana University 1[[email protected]] 2[[email protected]] 3[[email protected]] *
Corresponding Author
Abstrak
Penelitian ini berjudul “Directness and Literalness of Speech Acts in The Imitation Game Movie”. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengidentifikasi tindak tutur yang tergolong dalam tipe tidak langsung dan non-literal yang ditemukan dalam film The Imitation Game dan menjelaskan fungsi serta konteks situasi yang mendukung analisis tindak tutur yang tergolong dalam tipe tidak langsung dan nonliteral.
Data dalam penelitian ini diambil dari sebuah film yang diangkat dari kisah nyata berjudul The Imitation Game yang merupakan film bertemakan sejarah dalam bentuk biografi. Teknik yang digunakan dalam mengumpulkan data yakni teknik mencatat. Dalam penelitian ini ada tiga teori yang digunakan yakni teori jenis tindak tutur oleh Parker, teori kata kerja tindak ilokusi oleh Leech serta teori mengenai konteks situasi oleh Hymes.
Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa (1) terdapat sembilan data tindak tutur yang tergolong dalam tipe tidak langsung dan non-literal yang ditemukan dalam film The Imitation Game. Makna implisit dari tindak tutur dibentuk oleh kalimat berita, kalimat perintah dan kalimat tanya. Kemudian, (2) fungsi dari tindak tutur yang tergolong dalam tipe tidak langsung dan non-literal yang paling banyak muncul adalah direktif dan asertif.
Kata kunci: teori tindak tutur, The Imitaion Game, tidak langsung dan non-literal
Language is a means of communication, enabling people to have more interaction with by saying utterances and using gestures. In communication, people convey their ideas, feelings, or thoughts through clear statements to make others understand. Communication is successful when the message conveyed by the speaker can be understood by the hearer. (Austin, 1962: 25)
On one side, some people do not use clear statements to convey the message. What is stated is different from what is meant. It is different from what the speaker says orally and it relies on the context of situation. According to Yule (1996: 47), a speech act is an action performed through utterances.
Parker (1986) reveals that speech acts is divided into directness and literalness. Based on directness, speech act can be divided into direct speech act and indirect speech act. An utterance is considered to be direct if the syntactic form of an utterance corresponds to its meaning and function. However, if the syntactic form of the utterance does not correspond to its meaning and function, the utterance is considered to be indirect. For instance: Can you open the window? which is in the form of interrogative; however, it is used to perform directive function.
However, based on literal dimension, speech acts can be divided into literal speech act and non-literal speech act. In one situation, one can say That is nice as a response of What do you think about my dress? However, in another situation, we can also use the same utterance to rotor to different thing. For example: a mother who finds out her son watches an adult movie can say That is nice too. In this case, That is nice uttered by the mother is considered to be non-literal. Since this phenomenon is often found in our daily life, it is interesting to analyse the types of speech acts related to direct and literal dimensions and their functions in this study.
As mentioned above, language variation occurs frequently in the real life and the depiction of real life can be found, for instance, in a movie. Generally, movie represents the story via dialogue which contains utterances. The Imitation Game movie is chosen as the object of the research because it is a movie based on true story in the form of
biography. The conversation of the characters represents our daily conversation and reflects the perception of the society at that time. The conversation also contains the types of speech acts related to direct and literal dimensions.
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1. What expressions of directness and literalness - speech acts particularly Indirect and Non-literal types are found in the movie The Imitation Game?
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2. What functions of directness and literalness speech acts are found in the movie The Imitation Game?
Specifically the aims of the study are as follows:
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1. To identify the expressions of directness and literalness - speech acts particularly Indirect and Non-literal types found in The Imitation Game movie.
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2. To analyse the functions of speech acts found in The Imitation Game movie.
The data of this study was taken from the dialogues of the movie entitled The Imitation Game. The Imitation Game is a historical movie, with a screenplay written by Graham Moore based on the biography Alan Turing: the Enigma by Andrew Hodges. The Imitation Game was directed by Morten Tyldum and starred Benedict Cumberbatch as real life British cryptanalyst Alan Turing, who in the film is hired to decrypt German intelligence codes for the British government during World War II. This movie was released on November 28th, 2014 in the United States.
This study bases on library research and documentation method. The method and technique of collecting data was done in three steps. Firstly, the movie was intensively watched from the beginning until the end. Furthermore, the technique was note-taking. In this step, the scene in which the data occurred was captured by using print screen technique. Finally the selected data is transferred into computer to make the process of analyzing data much more easily.
A descriptive qualitative method was used to analyse the directness and literalness - speech acts and its functions used in the movie The Imitation Game. The selected data was classified into its forms (declarative, interrogative or imperative) and its meaning (literal and non-literal).
The Types of Speech Acts theory by Parker (1986) was used to analyze the directness and literalness types of speech acts particularly indirect and non-literal. In this case, the function was analysed using The Illocutionary Verbs by Leech (1983). The Ethnography of Communication theory by Hymes (1974) was used to analyse the context of situation. According to Hymes (1974), the context of situation can describe the setting, participants involved, goal, act of sequence, intonation, instrumentality, norms and genre. Having the selected data were described and verified, furthermore the conclusion could be drawn.
There were nine data non-literal indirect type of speech acts found in the movie The Imitation Game. The analysis of one data was described as follow.
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5.1 Could you have made a bit more noise, Alan?
Joan Clarke : Could you have made a bit more noise, Alan?
Alan Turing : Sorry.
The utterance Could you have made a bit more noise, Alan? Not sure you woke up my landlady does not perform the actual meaning that the speaker wants to convey. By uttering the utterance, the speaker actually wants to say Don’t make more noise! It can be seen from the additional sentence Not sure you woke up my landlady. which means that the speaker warns the addressee to not make more noise. Since what the speaker says is different from the fact, the utterance is considered non-literal.
The utterance is considered indirect speech because its form does not correspond to the function. The form of the utterance is interrogative, particularly request. It can be proven by the inversion of the verb Could followed by the subject You. These are the characteristics of interrogative form. The function of interrogative form is asking. However, the function of this utterance is directive. In this case, it has the intended meaning to get the addressee to do something, which is get Alan Turing to not make more noise.
If the utterance Have a pleasant trip back to Cambridge, Professor. is inserted by one of the directive verbs, it can be as follows.
“I [request] you to not make more noise”
By the construction above, S is represented by I referring to the speaker Joan Clarke and the command in his utterance is Don’t make more noise!
Setting and Scene: The conversation takes place in Joan Clarke’s dormitory, specifically in Joan Clarke’s room, near the window. The situation is in a low level of formality. Moreover, the scene occurs at night, almost midnight.
Participants: Joan Clarke as the speaker and Alan Turing as the addressee.
Ends: The speaker wants to get the addressee to be quiet and not to make noise. Hearing this, Alan Turing says Sorry which means that the goal of the speaking in uttering the utterance is received by the addressee.
Act of Sequence: The scene portrays that Alan Turing is trying to come into Joan Clarke’s dormitory through the window. Since Joan Clarke’s dormitory is only for girl, he cannot get inside normally by the door.
Key: The tone used by the speaker is rising but the volume is too low and seems whispering. It is kind of angry expression which is delivered in a warning face.
Instrumentality: The instrumentality of the utterance is in oral communication since the speech is done in face-to-face communication.
Norms: The participants are about in the same age and close friends since being together in the same team to break enigma. As the result, they can talk informally.
Genre: A small talk between close friends.
There are nine data of indirect non-literal type found in The Imitation Game movie. The forms of the data are declarative, interrogative and imperative. Regarding to
the context of situation, the speaker mostly tends to speak using indirect non-literal type since it is more polite.
In accordance to the five functions, not all of those functions are found in the movie of The Imitation Game. The meanings of indirect non-literal speech acts found are assertive and directive. Assertive is used to assert and affirm something meanwhile directive is used to do something respectively.
Hymes, D. 1974. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman Singapore Publishing.
Levinson, S.C. 1983. Pragmatics. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press
Parker, F. 1986. Linguistics for Non-linguists. London: Department of English Louisiana State University.
Yule, George. 1998. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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