VISION: JOURNAL FOR LANGUAGE AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING, 2018

VOL.7, NO.2, 160-169

http://dx.doi.org/10.21580/vjv7i23022

An Analysis of Speech Act Used

in London Has Fallen Movie

Zulfa Tutuarima1
1
Universitas Muria Kudus
1
[email protected]

Nuraeningsih2
2
Universitas Muria Kudus
2
[email protected]

Rusiana3
3
Universitas Muria Kudus
3
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
The most significant thing in speech act is the message that the ARTICLE HISTORY
speaker wants to convey. It means when using language is produces not only Received 19 September 2018
a sentence but also perform an action. The aims of the research are (i) to find Accepted24 October 2018
out the kinds of speech act used in London Has Fallen Movie (ii) to find out
KEYWORDS
the way of speech act and the classifications of illocutionary act used in
Pragmatic; speech act; the
London Has Fallen Movie. This research uses descriptive qualitative classification of illocutionary
research. This research figures out the kinds of speech act and the act
classifications of the illocutionary act used in London Has Fallen Movie. The
result of the research shows that: (i) there are 76 utterances of speech act
used in London Has Fallen Movie which is the most dominant is
illocutionary act consist of 37 utterances. (ii) there are 99 utterances of the
classifications of the illocutionary act, and the most dominant categories are
directive with 32 utterances and expressive with 23 utterances.

Introduction
Language is one of the essential things in human life. It is used to
communicate with others in their daily life. Because it has an essential role so
language cannot be separated from human life, either spoken or written. It takes
significant things because they can extend what they want to say and also they can
communicate what they want. Beside that language is also used to express their
feeling, idea, and also thought.
Nowadays, using language for communication with each other is necessary,
when the speaker and hearer understand what they are talking about. It makes the
best result for communication. The communicative act or called as the utterances
of the speaker commonly represent verbal communication. It means that people
 Zulfa Tutuarima, Nuraeningsih, Rusiana |123

do not only produce an utterance which is focused on grammatical structure and

every word but also the way they perform the utterance.
Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics which is a study about how context
contributes to the meaning. Pragmatics consists of speech act, deixis,
conversational implicature, cooperative principles, and politeness principles.
Pragmatics itself explains how using language in context, and the way in people
produce and understanding the meanings through language. In other words,
pragmatics tells about people's intended meanings, their assumptions, their
purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions.
Speech acts are the study of intended meaning the utterances spoken and
written. Moreover, the most significant things in speech act are the message of the
speaker intention, so the hearer understands a message from the speaker. Speech
act is divided into three parts; those are a locutionary act, illocutionary act, and
perlocutionary act. Speech act is the utterance which the speaker says, or the
speaker performs in every speech. The study of speech act is significant for
everyone. The importance of studying speech act is to make comprehend what
message that discovered in every utterance.
The students of English Education Department should be able to know the
speech act used and how to use it when they are talking to the other. If they
communicate without using speech act, there will be a misunderstanding between
the speaker and hearer. Using the speech act is very important especially in
communication because it is an act of communication, a speech act success if the
audience identifies, by the speaker's intention, and the attitude being expressed.
Usually, speech acts can be found in conversation. The conversation in the
movie can be an excellent example of speech acts because it represents the
complicated case of speech acts in order to find out what the main character does
by saying something. The one of important that mostly occurred in the movie is
the dialogue among the characters.
Here the writer wants to analyze speech act that is used in the movie, and
the title is London Has Fallen. This movie is political, action, thriller which
played by the famous US actor Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart directed by
Babak Najafi and the duration is about 99 minutes, although have a long duration
but it can't make bored this movie serves strain atmosphere, curiosity, and amazed
with the beauty of London city which is fall out by terrorists.

Statement of the Problem

Based on the background of the research above, the writer formulates the
statement of the research below:
a) What is the speech acts used in London Has Fallen Movie?
b) What are the classifications of illocutionary act used in London Has
Fallen Movie?
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Theoretical Framework

Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meanings as communicated by a

speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It means that more to
do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances that what the words
or phrases it those utterances might mean by themselves. Pragmatics is the study
of speaker meaning stated by Yule (1996).
Speech act is a concern with the speaker's communicative intention in
producing an utterance, and it is defined by the purpose for which the speakers
use the language, for example, to make a request, to apologize, and to report
stated Yule (1996). It means that the speech act is always used in daily life when
speakers say something and hearer know the purpose of speakers' says in the
communication so it will make the best result in the communication.
While using the language people do not produce only an isolated series of
sentences, but also perform an action. In other words, by using the language, they
either do something or make others do something such as thanking, requesting,
promising, and so on argued by Marquez Reiter (2000).
According to Austin (1969) is acknowledged as the creator of Speech Act
Theory. Based on comparison between constative utterances and performative
utterances, Austin refers to "constative utterances" to those utterances which are
used to describe or constate something, and those which thus are true or false, and
"performative utterances" to those utterances not only perform a speech act
beyond the assertion but also at the same time describe the speech act. Austin
divided three parts of Speech Act that are Locutionary Act, Illocutionary Act, and
Perlocutionary Act.
1. Locutionary Act
Locutionary acts are the act that is performed in order to
communicate, the act of actual uttering (the particular sense and reference
of an utterance) the study is the domain of field like phonetic, phonology,
and linguistic semantics. Alternatively, in other words, a locutionary act is
the basic act of utterance or producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
2. Illocutionary Act
Illocutionary act is an act performed in saying something, making
statement or promise, thanking, asking a question, etc. Alternatively, an
illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance
such as making a statement, offer, explanation, or for some other
communicative purpose.
3. Perlocutionary Act
A perlocutionary act is an act performed by saying something in a
particular context. It represents the change achieved each time, in a
particular context. These acts are the by-products of acts of communication;
 Zulfa Tutuarima, Nuraeningsih, Rusiana |125

acts performed using saying something, moving someone to anger,

consoling someone in his distress, etc. It means to create an utterance with a
function without intending it to affect.
Searle (1975) argued that the speech act is defined as an action changing the
universe of discourse when a speaker utters it, and a recipient grasps it. It may be
oral as well as written, or even expressed via some other communication from
such as sign language. Searle divides five categories for Illocutionary Act that is:
1. Assertive (Representative)
The purpose is to convey information about some states of affairs of
the world from the speaker to the hearer, such as boast, assert, claim,
characterize, state, diagnose, class, complain, and conclude.

2. Directives
Where the speaker requests the hearer to carry out some action or to
bring about some states of affair such as order, command, insist, suggest,
request, ask, beg, plead, pray, entreat, permit, and advise.
3. Commissive
The purpose is to show that the speaker undertakes to do something by
expressing an intention such as promise, pledge, threaten, or any other
words that match the criteria of commissive.
4. Expressive
The purpose is where speaker brings about some state of affairs by the
more performance of the speech act or reveal the speaker's state of mind
about a situation such as apologies, welcome, thanks, congratulate,
console, or other words that match with expressive.
5. Declaratives
The purpose is where the speakers bring about some state of affairs by the
more performance of the speech act or aim to create a change such as resign,
appoint, declare, name, call, define, nominate, etc.
London has fallen is the one of famous movie was released on 1 March
2016 and directed by Babak Najafi the one of great director in the US and has
directed so many famous movies such as London has fallen (2016), Easy money
II: Hard to kill (2012), Boys (2015), and the newest movie is Proud Mary which is
released on 2018. This is action thriller movie and starring the greatest actors and
actresses, for the main actor is Gerard Butler as Mike Banning and Aaron Eckhart
as President Benjamin Asher. This movie is a sequel from the previous movie that
is Olympus has fallen was released in 2013.
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Method Of The Research

a) Research Design
The research design of this study was qualitative research. Arikunto (2010)
stated that qualitative research was conducted to describe the current status of a
phenomenon that while exist at the time of the study. One of the characteristics of
this research is there is no control of treatment as it was around in experimental
research.
b) Data Collecting
The method of collecting data was some ways which could be used to
collect the data. In collecting the data, the researcher tookthe following step:
1. Watching London Has Fallen Movie in order to understand the
utterances.
2. Searching the English subtitle from internet copied from
https://opensubtitles.co/download-subtitle/London-Has-Fallen-
2016_73569
3. Making the transcription based on the subtitle.
c) Data Analysis
The researcher chose a content analysis to analyze the data. The material
may be public records, textbooks, letters, films, diaries, themes, reports, or
another document. The steps in analyzing the data were:
1. Identifying the speech act and categories of Illocutionary act that found
in the movie.
2. Analyzing the data into more specific speech act and categories of
Illocutionary act.
3. Interpreting the results of the speech act and classifications of
Illocutionary act which are used in London Has Fallen Movie.
4. Concluding the results of the speech act and the classifications which
used in the London Has Fallen Movie

Result and Discussion

The researcher analyzes the speech act used in London Has Fallen Movie based
on the conversation is used in the movie. It is directed by Babak Najafi while for the
script is written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, the duration of this
movie is 99 minutes, and the writer found the dominant of speech act are used in this
movie. So in this movie, there are so many utterances or conversations are
considered as a speech act. For locutionary act which used in this movie is 14
utterances, an illocutionary act is 37 utterances, and perlocutionary act is 25
utterances.
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For the classifications of the illocutionary act which is used in this movie is 99
utterances. While the categories which dominant this movie is directive which
utterance found is 32, and other categories are found in this movie are assertive is 26
utterances, expressive is 23 utterances, commisive is 12 utterances, and declarative is
six utterances.

Locutionary act used in the movie is 14 utterances and fortunately in this

movie locutionary act is still appearing because the entire locutionary act is not used
in many movies. Here is an example of a locutionary act which is used in the movie.

1. Locutionary Act

Raza: Did Philippine Intelligence track you? (speaker)

Kamran : (He listen and doesn't replay what Raza’s said.) (hearer)

Based on the example above, it proves that the utterance or conversation which
belongs to locutionary act is just real message from the speaker and the hearer did
not give the reaction what are the speaker’s said. All of the utterances which belong
to the locutionary act in this movie were having the same condition; when the
speakers were saying something, then the hearer was just stayed and listen to them.
From the example above, when Raza (speaker) said: “Did Philippine intelligence
track you?” Kamran (hearer) was passing through the speaker without giving the
reaction, and there was no intention from the hearer to replay what the speaker said.

2. Illocutionary Act

Trumbull: How bad is it? (speaker)

Staff: It is pretty goddamn bad, sir. All lines of communication have

been compromised, both civilian and military. (hearer)

In the examples above the speaker is trying to convey what they are wanted or
what they wanted to say. The speaker tries to explain. When Trumbull (speaker) said
How bad is it? When Trumbull as the first speaker is want to hear the explanation
from the other staff (hearer), and then he is explaining Trumbull (speaker) and said
"it is pretty goddamn bad, sir. All lines of communication have been compromised,
both civilian and military". When the staff (hearer) is saying like the utterances
above it means that the hearer wants to give the response based on what the other
speaker said.

3. Perlocutionary Act

Staff: Sir, I got your son on video chat. (speaker)

President Asher: Excellent. He had his first date last night. (hearer)
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When the speaker is saying something, then the hearer directly moves and do
what the speaker's want. When staff(speaker) said "sir, I got your son on the video
chat," and president(hearer) is giving a reaction "excellent, he had his first date last
night," here the hearer is giving a happy reaction, and the speaker is receiving a good
response from the speaker.

In this movie, so many utterances are categorized to the classification of

illocutionary act. Here is the example and the description of the classification of
illocutionary act is used in this movie.

1. Assertive
President Asher: What are you guys so damn nervous about? (speaker)
Lynn: British are world class, we all know their reputation. However, these
are the trips I hate. Last minute out of the country no time to plan. (hearer)

The utterance above reveals as a claim because when the speaker (President
Asher) said “What are you guys so damn nervous about? Then the hearer (Lynn)
said "British are world class, we all know their reputation. However, these are the
trips I hate. Last minute out of the country no time to plan." It can be explained that
when the speaker (President Asher) is asking about the condition of the hearer, and
the hearer (Lynn) states that British as a big and classy country, she is not ready for
going to London and the hearers are agreed with her statement.
2. Directive
Mike: Move! Go, go! (speaker)
Voight: You okay sir? Keep your head down. (speaker)
President Asher : (Directly enter the car and keep his head down.)
(hearer).

As seen in the example above when the speaker (Mike) said “Move, go, go” it
indicates as a giving command to the hearer, and the hearer is following what the
speaker said. Moreover, for the second speaker (Voight) said "You okay sir? Keep
your head down." Both of those utterances are giving the command to the hearer who
is directly doing what the two speakers (Voight and Mike) said.
3. Commissive
Lyyn: Mike? (speaker)
Mike: I always do, Sir. (hearer)
Based on the examples above, it can be seen that when the speaker (Lyyn) is
asking to the hearer for making sure that the hearer (Mike) can handle it, then hearer
(Mike) said “I always do sir,” the hearer is showing his intention and promise he will
do what the speaker wants.
4. Expressive
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Jax: What a pleasure this is, handsome men visiting me on such a lovely
evening. (speaker)
Mike: Long time, Jax. (hearer)

The example of expressive above is welcomed. It can be seen from the

example above when Jax (speaker) said “What a pleasure this is, handsome men
visiting me on such a lovely morning. The utterance above is considered as
welcoming someone.
5. Declarative
word Mr. President? (speaker)
President Asher: I do solemnly swear that will faithfully execute the office
of the President of the US. (hearer)

Based on the conversations above, the category of declarative which uses is

declared. It can be seen when Kamran (speaker) said Okay. Say hello to the world
Mr. President, any last word Mr. President? Then President Asher (hearer) states “I
do solemnly swear that will faithfully execute the office of the President of the US,
the utterance above is included in declarativebecause the speaker is declaring about
the president that sincerely that he is never losing though he will die.

Conclusion and Suggestion

1. Conclusion
In this action thriller movie was released on March 1, 2016, and directed by
Babak Najafi, there are 76 utterances found in this movie, which is the result for
kinds of speech act. Illocutionary act is 37 utterances, the perlocutionary act is 25
utterances, and locutionary act is 14 utterances.Speech act which is dominantly used
in this movie is an illocutionary act.
There are 99 utterances found in this movie, which is the result of the
classifications of the illocutionary act. The directive is 32 utterances, assertive is 26
utterances,expressive is 23 utterances,commisive is 12 utterances, and declarative is
six utterances. The classification of the illocutionary act which is dominant in this
movie is directive with 32 utterances because this movie is an action thriller movie
which is most of the utterances are giving an order to someone for doing something.
2. Suggestion
Hopefully, the readers will get knowledge that English is used especially in
linguistics which becomes an important part in English. For the next researcher who
wants to conduct similar research as I did before about linguistic, especially in the
speech act, it can help them in their research. Moreover, this research is expected to
be the references for those who are interested in the speech act. This research is still
lack in some theory, so you can explore more sources to develop your research.
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