The Analysis Of Searle’s Expressive Speech Acts Operating in “Changeling” (A Pragmatics Approach In The Film)

Oleh :
Ira Ratnasari - C1307010 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

The research was conducted to figure out the types of expressive speech acts in the movie entitled “Changeling”, the reasons of the speakers in uttering such types, and the ways of how the speakers exploit those types. This research used the Pragmatics approach with speech act as the field of study. It was a descriptive qualitative research and it employed purposive sampling as the sampling technique. Therefore, the data in this research were data that had important relationship with the problems being observed. Here, only the types of expressive speech acts were analyzed, i.e. the expressions which express the speaker’s intention toward his or her feeling. From the result of the data analysis, there are five types of expressive speech acts employed by the characters in the movie “Changeling”. They are apologizing, blaming, congratulating, praising, and thanking. The result of this research shows that there are some functions of expressives. Apologies and congratulations are expressed to show care of the speakers to the hearers. Apologies are also used by the speakers when they try to save the bad effects made by the hearer or to avoid conflicts, and to show the regret to the hearers. Blames are expressed to show the belief, conviction, the negative feeling and anger of the speakers to the hearers. Praises are expressed to reward of the hearer’s efforts and increase to the hearer’s motivation. Thanks are expressed to show the gratitude and appreciation of the speakers to the hearers and to close the public speech in formal situation. The other finding of this research is that the speakers use verbal and non-verbal expression in uttering expressives. The verbal expression means that the speakers utter a direct or indirect speech act, an explicit or implicit statement, in high, normal, or low intonation. The non-verbal expression is commonly done through body language to emphasize the speech acts which is performed via eyes gaze, facial expression (happy, sad, annoyed, angry, and disappointed), and body movement (nodding and bowing the head, hugging the hearer). The analysis also shows that the five types of expressives found in the movie “Changeling” are shaped based on the theme and the subthemes establishing the context of situation to make the characters perform those five types of expressives, although some of the speech acts are shaped as the development of the story. Based on the findings, it is suggested that the students who are interested in Speech Acts Study are expected to explore the speech acts especially about expressives to find out that expressive speech acts are not only classified into apologizing, blaming, congratulating, praising, and thanking. There are still many other types of expressives which can be found in the interactions, while for the other researchers, there are still many other classifications of speech act that can be taken into the similar field of the research. The researcher expects that the other researchers will be interested in conducting a research about speech acts as a further and a more xiv detailed analysis in the same field by taking the other classifications of speech acts such as directives, representatives, commissives, or declarations in the movie “Changeling”. It is also possible to other researchers to conduct the same research in the different sources of data such as the other movies, novels, dramas or nationally speeches.