Illocutionary Acts used by the main characters of The Devil and Daniel Webster Play Text by Stephen Vincent Benet

ABSTRACT

Language represents the world has been long. As the means of
communication, language has the most important role of the people interaction. In saying something one generally intends more than just to communicate. In other words, behind of speaker utterance has been acting and action. It means that speaking language is performing an action such as stating, asking, warning, and ect. Speech acts are acts of the communication. Speech acts are also considered in which to say something is doing something. Based on the Austin theory an utterance has three types of acts, that is, locutionary act which the utterance itself has meaning, illocutionary act is speaker meaning behind what he is uttered and the last is perlocutionary act is the effect of speaker’s intention to hearers. Furthermore, speech acts could be found not only in the social community conversation but also in the utterance which is uttered by the characters. Even, basically the utterance which is used in the play text is not natural. So, the writer chooses the ‘Devil and Daniel Webster’ play text because the Devil and Daniel Webster are based on a patriotic short story of the same title by Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943). The short story talks about a farmer living in New Hampshire, who is bored with his poor life, Jabez Stone. This study is important because it provides insight into utility of human communication.

The research attempts to investigate the phenomena of the illocutionary acts in the utterance produced of play text, especially the Devil and Daniel Webster. The research questions are what and how the illocutionary acts used by the main characters of the Devil and Daniel Webster play text by Stephen Vincent Benet. Moreover, the objectives of the study are to describe the illocutionary act and to provide description knowledge on the way of illocutionary acts used by the main characters of the Devil and Daniel Webster play text by Stephen Vincent Benet

The data were taken from the utterances which are used by the main characters of the Devil and Daniel Webster play text by Stephen Vincent Benet. Then, data are discussed into speech acts based on the Austin’s theory. In data analysis the researcher began with finding the context of utterances made by the main characters.

After analyzing the data, researcher found illocutionary acts used by the main characters which are determined the illocutionary acts. The types of illocutionary which are found in the utterances used by the main characters of ‘devil and Daniel Webster’ are constatives, directives, commisive and acknowledgment.

Finally, researcher hopes that this researcher will be able to help the next researchers who are interested to conduct in the same field of study.