THE STUDY OF SPEECH ACTS ON BARACK OBAMA’S AND HILLARY CLINTON’S CAMPAIGN SPEECHES

Abstract

The findings show that there are four types of speech acts produced either by Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Those are commisives, representatives, directives, and expressives. In Barack Obama’s campaign speech, the highest of speech acts produced by him is commisive with the percentage 53%. Representative and directive respectively follow commisive with the percentage 27% and 13%. The lowest percentage of speech acts is expressive with the percentage 7%. While in Hillary Clinton’s campaign speech, the highest of speech acts produced by her is representative with the percentage 41%. Then, the second speech acts produced by her is commisive with the percentage 33%. The next rank is directives and expressives. Both of them have the same percentage that are 13% The result above shows that in Barack Obama’s speech commisive appears as the dominant speech acts. While, in Hillary Clinton’s speech representative appears as the dominant speech acts. This study found that the main intended meaning from Barack Obama’s utterances are commiting himself to future acts and also convincing the audience about his seriousness to be the President of United States of America through conveying his great programs that will be run in his period of governance. While, the main intended meaning from Hillary Clinton’s utterances are expressing the truth or facts to the audience referring to the case of crisis economy in the United States at that time.