An Analysis of Assertive Acts in the “Dune” Movie

This study aims to find out the types and to analyze the meanings of assertive acts performed by the characters in the “Dune” movie that are supported by the context of the situation. There are three theories used to achieve the objectives of this study. First, the theory proposed by Searle and Vanderveken (1985) to find out the types of assertive acts. Second, is the main theory proposed by Leech (1981) to analyze the meanings of assertive acts. Last, is a supporting theory by Halliday and Hasan (1985) to explain the context of a situation through the conversation between characters in the movie. The data was examined using the method of descriptive qualitative analysis which was presented in informal and formal ways. As a result, the findings show that there are eleven types of assertive acts found in the movie and a total of 49 data. The frequency of occurrence of each type in this study from the highest shows that there are 14 assert utterance (28%), followed by 13 utterances (26%) inform, 6 state utterance (12%), 3 praise (6%), 3 argue utterance (6%), 2 remind utterances (4%), 2 report (4%), 2 admit (4%), 2 blame (4%), 1 guess utterance (3%), and assure with the appearance of 1 utterance (3%). This shows that most of the conversations conducted by the characters in this movie are types of assert, often used to express important facts, convey decisions, and clearly describe certain situation. Furthermore, there are five types of meanings found in the movie, as follows: thematic meaning (21 data), affective meaning (11 data), associative meaning (6 data), social meaning (3 data), and collactive meaning (1 data). The meaning can be discovered by understanding the context of the situation in the movie.