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Speech Act Analysis in The Movie The: Beauty and The Beast
Speech Act Analysis in The Movie The: Beauty and The Beast
Language is the core representation that helps to translate some word that people have in their mind
into a sentence of spoken works (Yule, 1996). Talking about communication, everyone needs
a hearer to understand and respond what they talk about. Speakers usually communicate in
the same context of language so that the message can we delivered easily. Nevertheless, there
are some communication cases where speakers could not get their messages across due to
different cultural background. There are some ways that can help to prevent such
on its social context. In pragmatics, there are many aspects and one of them is speech acts.
Speech acts consist of several categories and one of them is directive speech acts.
Pragmatics is the utterances of specific events and the intention of the speaker to hearer at times and
places involving language (Stanford Encyclopedia, 2006). There are several aspects of
pragmatics which include context, deictic, presupposition, implicature and speech acts.
Speech acts is the main point of pragmatics. In communication we use utterances in acting,
which is called speech acts. Speech acts themselves can be divided into three elements; (i)
Today, language is widely used in movies since it contains various language that puts different
meaning to the real world. When we watch movie, we can’t not only get entertained, but we
can also learn about other aspects such as education, moral and other important values of the
world. Movie is one of a tool that reflects the social life of human being.
According to Yule (1996), there are five types of categories of speech acts namely
declarative, directive, commissive, representative and expressive. Due to limited time and
space, this study will look at directive speech acts and the source of data collection will be
taken from the movie entitled The Beauty and The Beast. This movie is quite interesting as it
contains many dialogues which are good source for data analysis of this study, especially
from the angle of speech acts. Apart from that, two protagonist of this movie show significant
characteristics which is very interesting to be analysed. This movie also has good moral value
closely related to the utterance in every conversation. The conversation in the movie can be a
good instant of speech acts as it represent the complex case of speech act in order to find out
The communication act or verbal communication is usually represented by the utterances of the
speakers. In order for them to express their thoughts, they usually do not produce sentences
containing grammatical structure and words, but they also perform action through those
sentences. From this, we could see that every word or phrase uttered by human perform
different implicit action or meaning in it and if the hearer fails to get the intention of the
From the movie itself, there are two main characters, which are Belle and The Prince. Both of these
characters have their own unique way of expressing their thoughts. Belle is a girl who likes to
express her thoughts directly, while The Prince has hidden message in his utterances. In
speech acts, hidden message is normally occurred in daily conversation. So, this study will
investigate the types of directive speech acts performed by these two main characters in the
movie and look at the importance of the types of directive speech acts.
Methodology
The method that will be used in this study is qualitative method. The researcher has calculated the
frequency of directive speech acts used in the movie. Based on the findings gathered, it is
then used for qualitative purpose. The qualitative research related with synthesize the
information and describe the findings clearly. According to Ary (2010), the major
meaning, natural setting, human instrument, descriptive data, emergent design and inductive
analysis.
This study uses Austin’s Speech Acts Theory as the main framework to conduct this research.
relationship between what we say, what we mean, and what we understand according to a
particular context or situation. A speech act analysis is an utterance which has both a literal
meaning and a particular illocutionary force (Paltridge, 2000:16) these ideas lay at the heart
Two types of data source are used in this research, which are primary as well as secondary data. This
study uses “The Beauty and the beast” movie script by Bill Condon which was produced by
Walt Disney Pictures in 2017 as the main source of data which will be analysed by researcher
through speech act analysis. As for the secondary source, selected journals and book that are
1) Buy original DVD of the movie “The Beauty and the Beast”
2) Watching the Disney animation movie “The Beauty and the Beast”, trying to understand it
thoroughly, finding any important details that supported this research and then looking for all
of utterances.
4) Selecting the types and the patterns of speech act which are found on conversation in
“The Beauty and the Beast” movie based on the theory from Austin (1961)
5) Calculate directive speech acts found in the movie for the first 10 dialogues between the
6) Construct critical analysis to find out the significance of using directive speech acts in the
movie.
Findings
This section illustrates the finding of the research from collecting data. There are various
categories of direct speech acts in Beauty and the Beast of real-action version. The utterances
1. Begging
1 Belle The Prince Please, just tell me know one more thing about her
The utterances above comprise begging purpose of directive speech acts namely the hearer
2. Urging
No Speaker Hearer Dialogue
The utterances above comprise challenging purpose of directive speech acts because the
3. Asking
The utterances above comprise asking purpose of direct speech acts namely the hearer was
4. Demanding
1 The Prince Belle Yes, but you must promise to stay here forever
The utterance above comprises demanding purpose of direct speech act namely the speaker
5. Instructing
instructed to do something.
6. Ordering
The utterances above comprise ordering purpose of direct speech act namely the speaker
7. Recommending
The utterances above comprise recommending purpose of direct speech act namely the hearer
8. Requesting
The utterances above comprise requesting purpose of direct speech act namely the hearer was
analysis of direct speech act is based on the gesture and body movement of the hearer who do
the reaction. The direct speech act above shows the speaker intention to the hearer reaction.
Conclusion
The analysis and discussion lead to the following conclusions. “The Beauty and the Beast” movie
contains many interesting and memorable dialogues that can be categorized as the directive
speech acts. The conversations in the movie attract us from the way of speaking, acting and
body movement. It also happens in “The Beauty and the Beast”, the plots and live action help
viewers to focus on what the characters are doing. Based on the data analysis, it can be
concluded that directive speech acts are essential actions in social interactions, they are also
applied in the movie. Directive speech acts cannot be separated from daily social interactions;
therefore, Walt Disney uses them in their movie to show that the movie represents the social
interaction of human life. Based on the data analysis, the directive speech acts are frequently
performed in the movie. It can be seen from the analysis in the previous section that
elaborates the use of the directive speech acts. By watching this movie, the viewer will learn
about words, action and utterances. The viewer can learn about pragmatics, especially speech
acts by observing the dialogues and their context in every scene of the movie. The viewer can
see the importance of directive speech acts in keeping the smooth flow of the story lines of
the movie. The viewer can also learn grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary from what
they see and hear. They can imitate the action that the characters performing in the movie.
References
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