AN ANALYSIS OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS FOUND IN PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN SELECTED SPEECH

The study examined the use of illocutionary acts in Joe Biden’s selected political speeches. This study aimed to answer the research problems, which comprised (1) what are the types of illocutionary act found in Joe Biden selected political speech; and (2) what are the functions of illocutionary act found in Joe Biden selected speech. The observation method was used to collect the data. The data were analysed using qualitative descriptive method to identify the type and the functions. The data were collected through several steps including, watching the video of selected Joe Biden political speeches, transcribing the speeches and identifying the specific utterances relevant to Searle (1979) and Yule (1996) theoretical frameworks. The result of this study showed 52 utterances containing types of illocutionary acts such as: assertive, directive, commissive, and expressive. The most dominant type of utterance is assertive with 23 utterance or (44,2%). It was followed by expressive with 17 utterances or (32,7%), directive with 7 utterances or (13,4%) and commissive with 5 utterances or (9,7%). Declarations were not found in the speeches. The analysis only found 2 functions of illocutionary acts, namely direct speech and indirect speech. The most frequent function found in this study was direct speech.