An analysis of speech acts in the academic-oriented conversations of the English Department students of Widya Mandala University

As a social creature, communication is the most important thing in human's life. And language is the important means to communicate. In society, two people who come from different areas and have different cultures may speak different languages to express their ideas. Therefore, analysing the conversation is necessary so that the speaker and the hearer can avoid misunderstanding. Examining the way people use language in different social contexts provides a wealth information about the way language works and how social relationships take place in a community. Based on the reasons above, the writer writes this thesis because she wants to understand the pattern of the communication by analysing speech acts. Speech acts are the acts of speaking which see language as a form of acting. Speech acts themselves can be categorized into three parts: locution, illocution, and per locution. To make this study acceptable, the writer analyzed the communication pattern or speech acts in certain group of society, that is the speech acts spoken by the students of the English Department of Widya Mandala University either males or females whose age is around 18 to 23 in the campus. The writer recorded all of the conversations; academic and non academic but only the academic-oriented conversations were studied because those conversations were more scientific and more related to the educational programme. The writer used qualitative research design because it did not deal with quantitative calculation. This study finds that during informal situation on the campus, the majority topics produced by the students of English Department are academic-oriented