A study on speech acts used by a lecturer in UIIS Malang

ABSTRACT

The study of language in a society relates to the utterances which are reflected in speaking activity for the purpose of communication. In producing utterances speaker does not only do something to himself, but also intends to require something from the listener. It can be in the forms of an offers, comments, statements, and questions. Therefore, in communication, speakers and listeners do not always use one variation to express it. So it often occurs certain acts in certain situation depending on their contexts. This research concerns the speech acts used by the English lecturer of UIIS Malang in the classroom activities.

The qualitative descriptive research is as the design of this study. The data were collected from the utterances of one English content course lecturer in the classroom activities, The data were analyzed descriptively from the participant observation combined with the data from interview.

It was found that, three kinds of acts used by the subject. There were 30 constantive acts consisted of I retractive acts, 7 confirmative acts, 8 informative acts, 8 descriptive acts, 3 assertive acts, 2 responsive act and 1 assentive act. There were 32 directive acts consisted of 19 question acts, 8 request acts, 3 advisories acts, and 2 requirement acts, and there were 10 acknowledgment acts which consisted of 3 thank acts, 3 greet act, and 4 apologize act. Lastly, the speech acts are used directly rather than indirectly, since that the direct speech act occurs on 69 acts and indirect speech act on 5 acts.

Finally, several suggestions to the teachers and students and for further researchers were given. Teachers can be encouraged to communicate more effectively while students can have good interpretation and select each utterance the teachers made. Further researchers were hoped to criticize deeply the theory of speech acts which may not relevant to this area, researching speech acts from another aspect or perspesctive such as from other semiotic aspects.