This research contains directive speech acts used by the protagonist and antagonist characters in The Lion King movie (2019) based on Yule’s theory. This research has intended to describe the types and functions of directive speech acts used by the antagonist and protagonist characters, to explore types of characters built from directive speech acts, and to explain the distribution of types and functions of directive speech acts used by the antagonist and protagonist characters in each movie staging. Therefore, the research method used is descriptive qualitative. The location of this research is “The Lion King Movie (2019).” In short, there are four types of directive speech acts by using Yule’s theory: commanding, requesting, suggesting, and ordering. The study discovered 67 data of the directive speech acts used by the characters and commanding is the most frequently used by the antagonist and protagonist characters in different purposes. The characters use directive speech act to influence the behavior of other characters by giving commands, making requests, and giving suggestions. Through directive speech acts it can also reveal important information about the characters’ personalities and motivations. Meanwhile, the use of directive speech acts tended to be dynamic in each movie staging.
