The Example of Speech Act Analysis
Fitrah ramadhan
School of
Linguistics
Speech Act Theory
“Maaf….KAMI TIDAK MELARANG ANDA MEROKOK DIRUANGAN INI
TAPI MOHON ASAPNYA DITELAN” means “Sorry… WE NEVER FORBIT YOU TO SMOKE IN THIS
ROOM BUT PLEASE SWALLOW THE SMOKE. This warning is usually posted in such
places like offices, hospitals, restaurants, houses, and other public places
which indicates that everyone is forbidden to smoke in that room. However, this
is also the way people communicate with other people although in signal form.
Semantically, this warning is very unique and it has another variation of
meaning. Thus, let us try to analyze this waning using speech act theory
proposed by Austin which consists of three aspects; Locutionary, illocutionary,
and perlocutionary.
The first aspect, locutionary act is the act of
uttering sentence with a certain meaning. It is his act of simply uttering a
sentence from a language and a description of what he speaker says. The
locutionary act of the warning above is that the warning marker did not forbid
everyone to have a smoking in that room as long as they are able to not throw
out the smoke.
Illocutionary act, as the second aspect, is what the
speakers intend to do by uttering a sentence. Through that warning, there are
some assumptions or interpretations might come up of what the warning marker
wants. First, the warning marker wants to forbid everyone to not have smoke
there. Second, conversely, they permit everyone to have a smoke in that room
only if they do not throw the smoke out. This is why I stated before that this
a very unique warning. In fact, how could people not throw the smoke of their
cigarette while they are smoking? Instead they will be suffocating due to the
smoke they are swallowing. Therefore, this warning is actually forbid anyone to
not have a smoke in that room, but it is in polite form. In other words, that
warning contains politeness strategy to not allow people having a smoke there.
Perlocutionary act, the third one, is the effect on
the hearer of what the speaker says. It means that this is the response of the
hearer from the utterance uttered by the speaker. In this case, there will be
two things might happen. First, the speech act is succeeded done in which the
hearer understand the meaning of that warning so that they will not smoke
there. Second, the speech act is failed in which the hearer might ignore this
warning and insists to have a smoke due to the politeness words used in that
sign. Whether or not this polite word could make the hearer to not smoke there,
we cannot simply assume that. Because, I think, it depends on the habits of the
hearers themselves. What I mean is that some people of certain ethnic may
believe that it is not a strong warning and they will stay to have a smoke.
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