A Study on Speech Acts used in President Hugo Chavez’s “Rise Up Against the Empire” in the United Nation General Assembly

ABSTRACT

In attempting to express something in mind, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words but also they perform action. We can use words to do different things such as asserting, suggesting, promising, stating, warning, expecting and etc. The utterances’ meanings do not only depend on the literal meaning of one’s word, but what one intends to do with them, and the institutional and social setting in which the linguistic activity occurs. This is a concern of Speech Act.

Meaning of an utterance needs comprehension from the hearer. It must be done by the hearer because an utterance does not just have a real word meaning but also intended meaning. This is called Illocutionary Act.

This study focuses on Speech Acts analysis which is applied in Hugo Chavez’s speech “Rise Up Against the Empire” in the United Nation General Assembly in September 20, 2006. This study employs Searle’s theory to analyze the kinds of Illocutionary Acts and how those Illocutionary Acts are employed by President Hugo Chavez in his speech.

The descriptive qualitative method is used to analyze the data in this study. The data are presented descriptively because this study describes and explains Illocutionary Acts used by President Hugo Chavez in his speech. It describes the kinds and how those Illocutionary Acts are found in Hugo Chavez’s speech.

The findings show that there are four kinds of Illocutionary Acts. Those kinds are: Assertives, Directives, Commissives, and Expressives Illocutionary Acts. Declarative illocutionary Acts is not found in the findings because Hugo Chavez’s utterance did not change the reality. From the findings we know that Assertives Illocutionary Acts mostly dominate all of Hugo Chavez utterances. In addition, this study also finds the way of performing Illocutionary Acts used by Hugo Chavez in the United Nations General Assembly. Hugo Chavez used Direct and also Indirect Illocutionary Acts in his utterances, but Direct Illocutionary Acts mostly dominate all of Hugo Chavez utterances.

It is hoped that this study will be useful to the readers to enrich their knowledge about analyzing Speech Act theory in the speech not just in the form of communication and also contributes important information for the next researcher who is interested in doing the same kind of study. However, it is suggested for further researchers use another theory of Illocutionary Acts or other objects, so that different results might be found.