Speech Act Research Paper

SPEECH ACTS IN A NOVEL ENTITLED “A STUDY IN SCARLET”

I. Introduction

Speech act is actions performed via utterances (Yule, 1996: 47). Speech acts are divided

into three acts, namely locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act (Austin,

1970). The locutionary act tells about what is said by people. The illocutionary act talks about

what is the meaning behind an utterance. Illocutionary act is used to explain the real purpose

of someone’s utterance. The last, perlocutionary act, is the effect of an utterance to the hearer.

We can simply say that perlocutionary act is the act of a hearer after hearing utterances from

a speaker.

Utterances from a speaker brings a message which is intended to be done by the hearer.

For instance,

Besides, that

sentence also requests us to listen to our best friend’s problem. If we get our friend’s message

through the utterance, we will ask him/her about their problems and maybe we will end in

listening to their problem.

The example above shows us clearly that we experienced speech act phenomena in our

daily life. Not just in our daily conversations, we can also find speech act phenomena in

literary works. Just like this study, which used a novel entitled “A Study in Scarlet” to be

analyzed. This study will analyze the components of speech acts; locutionary, illocutionary,

and perlocutionary, and also analyzing the functions of the speech acts.

II. Materials and Method

The data of this study is a novel entitled “A Study in Scarlet” which was written by

Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle is a famous British writer which is well-known with his detective

novel genre. This novel was published in 1887, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, and then

published as a book in 1888. The detective activities inside the story makes this novel

interesting to be chosen as the data source.

The method and technique of collecting data that will be used is documentary

3.2 Speech Acts Functions

There are five types of general functions performed by speech acts (Yule, 1996: 53):

(1) Declarations are those kind of speech acts that change the world via utterance. The

speaker who states a declaration speech act, has to have a special institutional role. For

instance, when a referee says “You’re out!” it can be classified as declaration (Yule,

1996: 53).

(2) Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be

the case or not. It can be statements of facts, assertions, or descriptions (Yule, 1996: 53).

This kind of speech act can also be said as assertive utterance. Assertive utterance is

language used by a speaker to tell about what he/she believe and it concerns with facts.

An assertive also has a purpose to inform the hearer (Kreidler, 1998: 183). “The earth is

flat” is an example for representative, because this sentence tells about the speaker

believes (Yule, 1996: 53).

(3) Expressives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels. It can be

statements of pleasure, pain, dislike, joy, or sorrow. The example is “I’m really