A Study of Illocutionary Acts in Billie Eilish's Song Lyrics Entitled Idontwannabeyouanymore and Everything I Wanted

Abstract

Nowadays, most people especially teenagers, like to show their feelings through writing or listening to music because sometimes music is related to listener’s feeling or experience. A music can convey a message through song lyrics, so it becomes a channel for songwriters to convey the messages. This study aims to analyze illocutionary acts and the function of illocutionary acts in song lyrics of Billie Eilish’s songs Idontwannabeyouanymore and Everything I Wanted. This study is conducted by using descriptive qualitative method. The data are analyzed based on the theory of illocytionary acts by Searle (1969) and the function of illocutionary acts by Leech (1983). This study shows that there are four categories of illocutionary acts found in the song lyrics. They are representative, directive, commissive, and expressive. Representative act is found as the most dominant type of illocutionary act with 14 data (50%), followed by directive with 10 data (36%), commissive with 2 data (7%) and expressive with 2 data (7%). Moreover, there are four categories of the function of ilocutionary acts found in the song lyrics. There are conflictive, collaborative, competitive, and convivial. Collaborative function is found as the most dominant function with 13 data (46%), followed by competitive and conflictive with 6 data (21%) and the last convivial function with 3 data (11%).