Analyzing the Illocutionary Acts of the Main Character in 'The Woman in the Window' Film

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find and analyze the various types of illocutionary acts in utterances of the main character in the movie and also analyze the purposes of each of them. The object of this study is a movie titled “The Woman in The Window” by Joe Wright. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach and theory from Searle (1976) to explain the data found. The data from this study is taken from the utterances spoken by the main character in the movie. Listing, observing and classifying were used as data collection methods to condcut this study. The conclusion of this research shows that there are 4 out of 5 types of illocutionary speech acts in speech used by the main character including their purposes in the movie. The types of illocutionary acts found were assertives (18 data), directive (16 data), expressives (1 data), and commisives (1 data). These four types of illocutionary have their own purposes in each utterance. For the most used types of illocutionary acts, the main character used assertives in form of concluding, stating, and complaining because she often wanted to convince other characters. When the main character attempted to solve the case on her own, she sometimes used directives in the form of asking, requesting, ordering, commanding, and begging in order to make other characters do something for her. She also used expressives in the form of apologizing, disliking, and thanking to express her feelings. The last the main character once used commisives in form of making a duty to herself when she was alone.

Keywords: illocution, movie, pragmatic, speech act, utterance.