SPEECH ACTS ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN CHARACTER IN SHREK MOVIE SCRIPT

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine speech acts used by the main character in Shrek movie script. This study analyzes what types of speech acts produced by the main character, what types of speech acts are frequently produced, and what is the purpose of the main character using speech acts. The research is based on Austin’s (1962) theory of speech acts, Searle’s (1983) theory of types of speech acts, and Halliday’s (1989) theory of context of situation. The study applies both qualitative and quantitative method to analyze the data. Qualitative research is applied to analyze the data in the form of the text in the movie script and quantitative research is used to count the percentage of speech acts used by Shrek to conclude which speech acts is dominantly used. Documentary technique is used in this study to collect the data. The movie script is taken from the official website of movie script http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Shrek.html [2013, October 17]. The result of this thesis presents that Shrek as the main character tends to use four types of speech acts. They are directives, representatives, expressives, and commissives. The result shows the most dominant speech acts used is directives with the percentage (44%, 22 utterances), whereas the least speech acts used is commissives with the percentage (9%, 5 utterances). Representatives and Expressives respectively follow directives (31%, 15 utterances and 16%, 8 utterances). The purposes of Shrek uses speech acts are various according to what types of speech acts he produced. It also relates to the story in the movie. From the analysis, it is found that Shrek tends to use directives dominantly because he wants to make the hearer do something. Besides, he also wants to be admitted by the people that he actually is a kind ogre.