An Analysis of Performative Speech Acts on FSC Part 1 English Book Using Searle’s Model

Abstract

This research highlights the significance of speech acts, to enable readers to have approachable access to the stories, used by characters in the first five chapters of the book, such as Mr. Lewis, Stewrd and Norma from chapter 1, Jess and his father from chapter 2, David, Herry, Sam, and Laura from chapter 3, Roger and a lady from chapter 4, and Hubart, Mr. Manana, and George from chapter 5. to perform certain actions. Taxonomy of illocutionary Speech acts originally proposed by Austin (1975) and lately incorporated by Searle (1976); are used to analyse the data. The classifications of Searle’s speech acts are Representative, commissive, expressive, declaratives and directives. It is descriptive qualitative research. Onethird of the book has been chosen to examine the speech acts used in FSC part 1 English book by using a convenience sampling technique. Results indicate that in the five chapters of FSC part 1 English book, there are five types of speech acts; classified as 34% directives 26% are expressives, 23% representatives, 9% commissives and 8% declaratives. Secondly, to interpret actions performed through utterances and understand the chapters, a reader relies on the shared background as well as powers of inference to create a common and appropriate understanding.Lastly, learners can comprehend that different utterance forms have diverse communicative purposes and to understand an utterance shared contextual knowledge is important, to effectively 
communicate.