Questioning speech acts performed by David Speers in Julia Gillard’s interview

ABSTRACT

Questioning, an activity that people frequently do, is one of the major tools in communication, but asking the right questions is the ingredient of effective communication. The writer in this study is interested in analyzing questioning speech acts. In investigating questioning speech acts, the writer chooses one of Julia Gillard’s interviews which the host or the interviewer is David Speers. David Speers is an Australian journalist and the political editor at Sky News Australia. In 2006, he was awarded with the Astra Award for "Most Outstanding Performance by a Presenter for Political Editor", as host of the regular Sky News current affairs program, Agenda. Therefore, the writer believes that David Speers and Julia Gillard used a language not only for communication but also for other purposes.

Considering to the significance of the study, this study has two objectives. The first objective is to find out the types of questioning speech acts performed by David Speers in Julia Gillard’s interview. The second objective is to describe the functions of questioning speech acts performed by David Speers in Julia Gillard’s interview.

Since the data are analyzed and described as they are, namely transcript of Julia Gillard’s interview, qualitative approach deals with the data which are in the form of words and sentences, rather than numbers and statistics. The data of this study are all questions uttered by the interviewer and answers uttered by the interviewee. The data source is taken from credible source, the official website of Prime Minister of Australia http://www.pm.gov.au/.

Based on the findings of the study, the writer concludes that there are two question types performed by David Speers in Julia Gillard’s Interview. Those are open ended question and closed ended question. The writer finds different distribution of questions in every topic being discussed. All questions in this interview have many functions, not only as directive speech act (to request information), but also as representative speech acts (to insist, complain, affirm, make self-conclusion, and clarify) and commisive speech acts (to guarantee, refuse, and deny). Finally, it is suggested for the next researchers to analyze the same subject (Julia Gillard’s interview) by using another speech acts types, such as promising speech acts, apologizing speech acts, denying speech acts and others.