An Analysis of Type of Speech Acts Found in The Help Movie Script.

Communication is an activity of expressing ideas and feelings or giving information to other people. In communication, speakers not only produce utterances but also they perform action via utterance. In Pragmatics, it is called speech act. According to Austin (1962), speech acts as the action which is performed in saying something. He also stated that saying something can be detected as doing something. They are three types of speech acts, they are: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts. Illocutionary acts can be identified using illocutionary force. Objective of this research are (a) to find out the type of illocutionary acts used by the main characters in The Help movie script, (b) to find out the types of the speech acts classification on function used by the main characters in The Help movie script. This is a qualitative research. The data is the utterances on illocutionary acts and the types of the speech acts classification on function which is produced by the main characters in The Help movie script. The main data source is obtained from utterances which are produced by the main characters in The Help movie script. The result shows the numbers of illocutionary acts that are identified 200 utterances. The majority type of illocutionary acts used by the main characters is questioning. From those finding, I classified the types of the speech acts classification on function into five categories. They are: directive (82), assertive (55), expressive (36), commissive (27), and declarative (0). It can be seen that the majority utterances used by the main characters in The Help movie is directive. At the end, I suggest to the students of English Education Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Muria Kudus University and the further researchers, they should pay attention on the theory of speech act which they are studying. Then for teachers and lecturers, they should be aware in explaining the speech acts theory which is studied in Pragmatics. They also should use interesting media to enrich the students’ knowledge in teaching learning process