ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS FOUND IN “LOL” MOVIE: ANALYSIS USING LEECH’S PERSPECTIVE
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ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS FOUND IN “LOL” MOVIE:
ANALYSIS USING LEECH’S PERSPECTIVE
By:
NI LUH PUTU RIASTINI RATNASARI
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LETTERS, UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
abstrak
Skripsi dengan judul ‘Illocutionary Acts Found in LOL Movie: Analysis Using Leech’s Perspective’ bertujuan untuk menjawab dua pertanyaan pokok: Apa jenis illocutionary acts yang ditemukan dalam film ‘LOL’ dan bagaimana konteks situasi bisa membantu kelancaran atau jalannya komunikasi. Komunikasi mencakup pembicara dan pendengar. Apabila orang menggunakan bahasa, mereka cendrung mempunyai tujuan tertentu dalam setiap ujarannya. Beranjak dari fenomina inilah penulis merasa tertarik untuk memilih salah satu aspek kajian pragmatik yakni illocutionary acts sebagai topik dari penelitian ini.
Data dalam penelitian ini diambil dari dialog/percakapan para karakter dalam film ‘LOL’. Percakapan diunduh, ditranskripsi, dicatat dan diklasifikasi sedemikian rupa untuk mencari illocutionary acts. Data yang sudah terkumpul dan terklasifikasi dianalisis secara kualitatif dan deskriptif dengan memakai teori Illocutionary Acts yang ditulis oleh Leech dalam bukunya: ‘Principle of Pragmatics’ (1983).
Berdasarkan analisis dan pemaparan ditemukan bahwa semua macam illocutionary acts yang dikemukakan oleh Leech (1983) ditemukan dalam dialog para karakter dalam film ‘LOL’. Di samping itu, tiap – tiap tipe illocutionary act mempunyai fungsi – fungsi yang dipengaruhi oleh konteks dan situasi pada saat dialog berlangsung.
Kata Kunci: Illocutionary Acts, konteks, pragmatik.
Communication involves people to be speakers and listeners. When people use the language, they tend to put some purposes inside the utterance.
Illocutionary act is absolutely essential to any discussion of speech acts. Illocutionary act describes what the speaker does in uttering to the hearer in the context. It is usually found and used in daily life and cannot be separated from human daily interaction. Day by day people do interact with each other employing various kinds of illocutionary acts depending on the nature and situation of the interaction.
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1. What types of illocutionary acts are found in LOL movie?
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2. How context of situation can help the flow of
communication/conversation?
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1. To find out what kinds of illocutionary acts are found in LOL movie.
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2. To explain how the context of situation can help the flow of communication/conversation.
This study used a mixed method that is a combination between primary and secondary research. Based on primary research, qualitative method was used, which means that the data was described using words or sentences based on the original data. Meanwhile, in the secondary research both library research and literature reviews were conducted.
The data for this study were taken from the dialogue scripts of the movie entitled “LOL” written by Azuelos and Kamir Aïnouz and directed by Lisa Azuelos (2012). LOL is a 2012 American coming of age comedy-drama-romance. The film is a remake of the 2008 French film LOL (Laughing Out Loud). The stars of the movie are Miley Cyrus, Demi Moore, Ashley Greene and Adam Sevani.
This study focuses on speech acts related to utterances of the speakers or interactants in a conversation, which in this screenplay, the utterances were written down. The writer chose the movie entitled ‘LOL’ as the object of the research because the conversations of the main characters represent our daily life conversations and they employ or use some illocutionary acts.
Practically, there were four steps or process of collecting data as seen in the following:
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1. First, the movie was watched attentively several times to figure out the targeted data/sentences from the utterances.
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2. Second, the dialogue/script of the movie was downloaded from the search engine internet.
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3. Third, the transcription of the dialogues was worked out followed by the selection and classification of the illocutionary acts.
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4. Fourth, the presentation of the data was carried out.
In brief, the stages to analyse the data can be presented as follows:
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1. The dialogues in the script were thoroughly read.
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2. The dialogues that indicate to illocutionary acts were jotted down
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3. The classified data was respectively analysed following Leech’s Perspective.
The first analysis uses the theory of illocutionary act using Leech’s perspective. Leech (1983) in his book Principles of Pragmatics proposed that there are 5 basic classifications of illocutionary acts combined with Searle’s first four categories (assertives, directives, commissives, expressives). The fifth category is known as rogative to specify between a request for an action and a request for giving information (Leech:1983:206)
According to Leech (1983) there are five types of illocutionary act, they are assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and rogative. The second analysis uses the theory of Ethnography of Communication by Dell Hymes (1974). It defines context of situation by his SPEAKING method. In this study, the first five elements were used in analyzing the data.
Below is a sample of analysis of one of the five illocutionary acts along with its corresponding functions and contexts of situation that helps maintain the flows of communication of the characters in the “LOL” movie.
The point of purpose of the assertive members class is to commit s to the truth of the expressed proposition: eg. stating, suggesting, boasting, complaining, claiming, reporting. Semantically, assertives are propositional. Assertive verbs normally occur in the construction ‘S verb (…) that X’, where S is the subject (referring to the speaker), and where ‘that X’ refers to a proposition.
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5.1.1 Stating
Data 1
Ashley : OMG! Your new song is amazing.
Kyle : You liked it?
Ashley : The guitar solo is hot.
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a. Analysis of the type of illocutionary acts
According to the utterance uttered by Ashley (The guitar solo is hot) as a response to Kyle’s question (You liked it?) it infers that Ashley is performing an act of stating as a part of Assertive illocutionary act. It can be considered Assertive illocutionary act since Searle (1979) in Leech (1983: 106) stated the point of assertive category is to commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition. Ashley in this case is stating to Kyle towards his question asking whether Ashley likes the new song or not. Leech (1983: 205) states that assertive verbs normally occur in the construction ‘S verb (…) that X’ whereas in this case S is Ashley as the speaker and that X is stated as a proposition. In other words, ‘Ashley states that the guitar solo performed by Kyle is hot’ as a response to Kyle’s question.
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b. Analysis of context of situation
At this point, analysis of context of situation that can help the flow of communication is presented. The theory of Ethnography of Communication by Hymes (1974) is used as the basis of the analysis.
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1. Setting and scene : The setting refers to the time and place while scene describes the environment of the situation. This conversation takes place at a corner spot somewhere around Wrigleyville High School. The scene is in the morning on the starting of the first semester where every student is very excited to go to school.
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2. Participants : This refers to who is involved in the speech
including the speaker and the audience or the speaker and the hearer. The element of participants also includes the relationship and social dimension (solidarity or social distance and social status or power) among them (Hymes, 1972). There are two participants involved in this conversation. They are Kyle and Ashley whose relation is just a normal friend. Ashley is an aggressive-pretty-young girl. People usually call her the ‘post-it’ girl because she sticks to every guy and pretends that she loves them. And Kyle is a handsome and kind guy. In this conversation Ashley acts as the speaker who talked to Kyle at first.
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3. Ends : This refers to the purpose and goals of the speech
along with any outcomes of the speech. Ashley’s utterance has a purpose to answer Kyle’s question with a statement that his guitar solo performance was amazing and also to emphasize that she liked his new song.
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4. Act sequence : This refers to the order of events that took place
during the speech and also the message form and content. In the data, Ashley at first said that Kyle’s new song was amazing. And Kyle responds with a question whether Ashley liked his new song or not. Meanwhile, Ashley answers it with a statement that his guitar solo was hot. That utterance has the same meaning as to the fact that she obviously liked his new song.
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5. Key : This refers to the overall tone or manner of the
speech. It means the way used by the participants of exchanged utterances in performing speech acts. In the data, Ashley speaks to Kyle in a very enthusiastic way like she wants to flirt on Kyle. Meanwhile, Kyle responds in a common way.
The utterance “The guitar solo is hot” uttered by Ashley to Kyle is an expression of stating. She states that the guitar solo performed by Kyle is hot or worth-watching. If we look at the context of situation, the utterance uttered by Ashley could also be another way in responding to Kyle’s question “You liked it?”. Ashley chooses to respond by giving a statement instead of saying a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Based on the foregoing analysis and discussion, the following points can be drawn as conclusion:
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1. All types of illocutionary acts proposed by Leech (1983) were found in the LOL movie dialogues/conversation. Those illocutionary acts are assertives, directives, commisives, expressive and rogatives.
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2. Each of the above illocutionary acts has its intended attributing functions, which are governed or affected by the nature of the talk. In assertive the functions are stating, suggesting, and complaining. In directives the functions are commanding and advising. In commisives the functions found are promising and offering. In expressive the functions are thanking and apologizing. Meanwhile, inquiring, asking and questioning are the functions which are found in the rogatives.
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3. Context of situation was found contributive upon the flows of the conversation. The SPEAKING theory proposed by Hymes (1974) was found really useful to comprehend the meaning of the utterance based on the context of situation. Its governing context can help the interlocutors or the participants of the conversation grasp and understand the essence of the talk more easily.
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Leech, Geoffrey N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longham Group Ltd.
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