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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A.

Background of Study

Language is a nucleus of communication for people to convey and express

their ideas. According to Halliday in Widdowson (1996: 14), language is a system
of signs which are socially motivated or informed in that they have been
developed to express their social meanings. People communicate using two kinds
of signs: spoken and written languages.

Most of them understand the lexical or grammatical meaning based on what is

written in the text and what is uttered by the speaker. But addressee usually
neglects the condition or circumstances arround and just ends up with the
linguistic meaning of the utterance. It could cause different meaning with the

In spoken language, to convey ideas and prevent ambiguous meanings, the

speaker should state their ideas distinctly or the addressee will catch different
intention. What the words actually mean on the occasion could only be

meaning, the addressee needs to observe the situation and condition of the
environment. This study of the context is what is called pragmatics.
To convey the ideas of the speaker and to get the responds from the
addressee, there are speech acts that people could use. In this thesis, the researcher
is using a speech acts classificasion explained by Searle. There are five kinds of
speech act, representatives, directives, commisives, expressives, and declarations.
. One of
those speech acts is directive utterances. It said by the speaker to get the addressee
to do something (Searle, 1976: 13). These could b

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utterances such as command, offer, invite, ask, order, request, beg, permit, dare,
and challenge.
Directive utterances are expressed by three kinds of linguistic forms.
Sadock and Zwicky in Levinson (1983: 242) state that there are three basic
sentence-types, interrogative, imperative, and declarative. These linguistic forms
are used by people in directive utterances to get the addressee to do something.
Interrogative sentences would probably not only have the intention of asking
something, it could have another intentions. Some of those different intentions are

discussed by the speech act theory.

British biographical film based on the life
of Margaret Thatcher, the longest serving Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom of the 20th century. The film was directed by Phyllida Lloyd. This film

would like to analyze the illocutionary forces of interrogative sentences stated in

the film.
Various utterances containing various kinds speech acts are uttered by the
in the film are
affected by their circumtances and sociality. Below is the example interrogative

The sentence is uttered by Margaret Tatcher, at the shop in Nr. Chester

Square, London. She asks the employee of the shop about the price of the milk
that she wanted to buy. Margaret also distracted for a while with the newspaper in
the desk with a hotel terror highlight. Before Margaret uttered that sentence, the
employee has already stated that the price of the milk is 49 pence.
According to the linguistic form, the sentence that Margaret Tatcher states
is an interrogative sentence. Without using the context, the sentence will only
mean that Margaret is asking about the price. But from the view of speech acts
theory, the illocutionary force of this sentence is that Margaret wants to make sure
about the price. She does not believe that the price is 49 pence. It is proved by her
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facial expression after the employee states the price for the second time. The basic
function of this utterance is a confirming.
Based on the phenomenon above, the researcher is conducting the research
A PRAGMATIC STUDY ON THE ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE

The researcher decides to analyze the pragmatic meanings

because she is interested in how people share their idea with the other person. She
is interested to do a research on illocutionary force of interrogative sentences in

B. Problem Statement
Based on the background of study, the research problems are formulated
as follows:
1. In what contexts are interrogative sentences have used as its

2. What are the illocutionary force of interrogative uttered used by the

C. Problem Limitation
In the film, a character must be clear in uttering the sentences to get the
things done and in performing the action. Yule states that speech acts are divided
into direct and indirect speech acts (1985). When the speaker tries to convey the
meaning to the addressee using the straightforward noun or verb, he/ she is
performing direct speech act. But when the speaker does not use straightforward
noun or verb, he/ she is performing indirect speech act.
Austin stated in Jaworski and Coupland that there are three kinds of sense
in performing an utterance: locutionary act, illocutionary force, and perlocutionary
effect (1999). The semantic meaning of the sentence without using any context is

the utterance, as ordering, asserting, inquiring, ordering, urging or advising. What

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the addressee responds after the speaker performs the utterance is the
perlocutionary effect.
Searle in Levinson (1983: 240) classifies speech acts as declarations,
representatives, expressive, directives, and commisives. Three forms of utterances
of directives speech acts are interrogative, imperative and declarative utterances.
To limit the research, what the researcher analyzed is the illocutionary force of

interrogative sentences in contexts and causing some other acts taken as the main
focus in this research. The researcher focuses on what illocutionary force occurs

D. Research Objectives
This research answers the problem statement which is stated before. The
objectives of the research are as follows:
1. To describe the contexts of interrrogative sentences that have its

movie.
2. To explain the illocutionary force of interrogative sentences employed
by the characters.

E. The Benefit of the Study

The research gives some benefits to the readers, the students of English
Department, High School students, and the other reserachers.
1. To the readers, it is expected that this research will give more
information about kinds of illocutionary force of interrogative
sentences.
2. To students of English Department, it is expected that this research will
give such deep understanding of speech acts especially the
illocutionary force.

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3. To High School students, it is expected that this research will inform

that in interrogative sentences there are various intent beside the
question and the answer.
4. To other researchers, it is expected that this research will give
additional information that can help the researchers to conduct similar
researches.