A STUDY OF SPEECH ACTS: REVEALINGJAMES BROWN’S PERSONALITY BASED ON THE MOST DOMINANT TYPE OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS THAT APPEARS WITHIN HIS DIALOGUES IN GET ON UP MOVIE

Abstract

Speech acts studies can be applied in multiple cases, including revealing someone’s personality. Someone’s speech acts can be used to interpret personality because every single utterance shows the way someone thought and act. This study is found in Get on Upmovie which features James Brown as the main character. This research is based on Austin’s (1962) theory about speech acts, Searle’s(1983) theory about five basic acts, Brown and Yule’s (1983) theory about context, Yule’s (1996) theory about felicity condition, and Wiggins’s (1996) theory about five personality traits. Based on that movie, the researcher uses the selected dialogues from James Brown and his audiences. Those dialogues are gained by purposive sampling method. The researcher focuses on dialogues of James Brown in earlier career until he died. Besides, those dialogues have 3 aspects: (i) locutionary acts, (ii) illocutionary acts, and (iii) perlocutionary acts. The main focus of analysis in this research is illocutionary acts since it contains intended meaning from someone’s utterances. Illocutionary acts in James Brown’s utterancesare categorized in four type, i.e. directives, representatives, expressives and commisives. The most dominant type of illocutionary act appearing in James Brown’s utterances is interpreted as his personality. The goals of this study are (i) to find out the most dominant type of illocutionary acts that appears in James Brown’s utterances within the movie. (ii) to interpret the most dominant type of illocutionary acts that appears in James Brown’s utterances as his personality. This study is qualitative research because it deals with describing rather than numerical (Mackey and Gass, 2005:162). The data in this research are documentary data which use movie as the data. The movie shows the entire life story of the main character. The analysis is focused on James Brown’s earlier carrier until he reaches his succesful career in music industry. The description contains the interpretation of his speech acts as his personality. The 50 selected utterances of James Brown are analyzed in order to find out the most dominant type of illocutionary act that appear within his utterance. The most dominant type of illocutionary act is interpreted as his personality through Wiggin’s (1996) theory of five personality traits. The result of this research shows that directive type of illocutionary acts is James Brown’s dominant speech act. It shows that he has a tendency in showing a show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement (Wiggins: 1996). Based on the theory of five basic traits, those all James Brown’s traits can be categorized as high conscentious personality.