An analysis of illocutionary act in Oliver Henry's short stories

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Azmillah, Dini (2021) An analysis of illocutionary act in Oliver Henry's short stories. Undergraduate thesis, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya.

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Abstract

This research analyzes the illocutionary act that exists in three short stories by O. Henry; they are The Last Leaf, The Gift of The Magi, dan The Furnished Room. There are two statements of the problem; 1. What are the kinds of illocutionary acts used in the short stories by O. Henry. 2 What are the functions of the kinds of illocutionary act used in the short stories by O. Henry. The researcher applied a descriptive qualitative research design. The data of this research is in the form of words or sentences. Sources of data are the utterances that exist in three short stories by O. Henry. The instrument of the research is the researcher herself. The researcher used speech act theory by Searle (2005) to answer the statements of the problem. The finding of this research shows that the kinds of illocutionary acts used in the three short stories are different. There is only one story that uses all the kinds of the illocutionary act based on Searle theory, that is The Last Leaf story. In the first story, “The Last Leaf”, the researcher found all the kinds of illocutionary acts (representative, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative). In the second story, “The Gift of The Magi”, there are three kinds of the illocutionary act; they are representatives, directives, and expressives. the last story is “The Furnished Room”, the researcher only found two kinds of the illocutionary act (representatives and directive). This research also reveals the functions of the illocutionary acts. Representatives used in those three stories are stating, informing, predicting, explaining, describing, complaining, claiming, agreeing, and convincing. The directive illocutionary acts have functions to asking, suggesting, requesting, commanding, ordering, and inviting. There are promising and refusing utterances only found in The Last Leaf story. These two stories (The Last Leaf and The Gift of The Magi) have a function of expressing happiness, expressing sadness, disappointment, regretting, surrender, congratulating, and greeting. The declarative illocutionary act is only declaring people status, and it was found in The Last Leaf story.