Illocutionary acts in Barack Obama’s inaugural speech

ABSTRACT

According to Renkema (1976:22), “Every human being performs speech act, then the respond of listener can be either direct or indirect act and the action includes illocutionary act”. Illocutionary acts are the real actions which are performed by the utterance, where saying equal doing, as in betting, plighting one truth, welcoming and warning. According to Renkema (1993:21), illocutionary acts are the acts which are committed by producing an utterance; by uttering a promise, a promise is made; by uttering a threat, a threat is made. The illocution is the focus attention of speech act (Renkema, 1993:23).

In this research, the writer really wants to know about the illocutionary acts used by Barac Obama in his inaugural speech. The writer chose Barac Obama’s inaugural speech as source of the data. This study aims answer the research problems: 1) What types of illocutionary acts used on Barack Obama’s inaugural speech? and 2) what functions of illocutionary acts used on Barack Obama’s inaugural speech?

The design of this study is the descriptive qualitative research. The data are in the form of the utterance of Barac Obama, in which the data conducted from his inaugural speech. It is also descriptive because it described the types and the function of illocutionary acts in Barac Obama’s inaugural speech.

Based on the research finding and discussion, the most frequent assertive act performed by Obama is informing, the most frequent directive act performed by Obama is recommending, the most frequent commesive act performed by Obama is promising, the most frequent expressive act performed by Obama is thanking, and the most frequent expressive act performed by Obama is declaring. Finnaly, all of the types and the function of illocutionary acts used by Barac Obama in his inaugural speech, during the observation period of this study.

The writer hopes that the study would be additional source information to increasing the knowledge of illocutionary, especially concerning with illocutionary acts in Barac Obama’s inaugural speech. Therefore, the writer suggest the further writers to criticize the theory of illocutionary acts which may be not relevant to this area and creatively correlated this study to other linguistic disciplines, for example psycholinguistic etc.