ABSTRACT

Devi Pratama Putri. S891808010. Indonesian EFL Learners’ Comprehension of Appropriateness of Criticism Speech Act. A Master Degree’s Thesis. Consultant I: Agus Wijayanto, M.A., Ph.D. Consultant II: Prof. Dr. Endang Fauziati, M. Hum. Department of English Education, Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Surakarta. 2022

Adequate pragmatic competence, or the ability to use language in a social context appropriately (Taguchi, 2009), is essential for successful communication, particularly across cultures and societies. Many previous studies in appropriateness focused on speech act production, pragmatic development, and rater evaluations, but only a few investigated pragmatic comprehensions. Therefore, this current research attempts: (1) To investigate EFL learners’ comprehension of the pragmatic appropriateness of the Criticism Speech Act and (2) To observe EFL learners’ foundations to evaluate the appropriateness of the Criticism Speech Act.

This study used a qualitative approach. 20 EFL learners participated in this study. The participants were divided into two groups: Group 1 consisted of 10 EFL learners from the undergraduate program and Group 2 consisted of 10 EFL learners from the graduate program. The study used a questionnaire with DCTs, open-ended questions, and interviews to elicit the data. The data were analyzed using the model by Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2014).

The findings revealed that EFL learners could understand the appropriateness of criticism speech acts. They could indicate which utterances were associated with appropriateness or inappropriateness by considering various criteria such as politeness, power and social distance, linguistic features, strategy, intention, reasoning, and settings. Finally, this research has implications for English teaching-learning, that teachers should promote appropriateness as an important aspect of pragmatic competence to EFL learners so that they can use language appropriately to communicate in the target language.