FUNCTIONS OF SPEECH ACTS IN AUSTRALIAN MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS SPEECH AT UNGA

Abstract

Sometimes, politicians may use speech acts in their political speeches that the audience may interpret in a variety of ways. Speech acts are used when a speaker expresses words or phrases to achieve specified objectives and it relates to pragmatics in some way. This research aims to find the most dominant and the functions of illocutionary acts found in Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs speech at UNGA. The theory used was from Searle and it was found that there were four illocutionary acts in the speech, namely representative, commissive, directive, and expressive. It was found that representative was the most dominant type of act in the speech. It occurred 54 times to inform and state the current condition and issues of the world. The second was commissive with 23 occurences, followed by directive with 14 occurences, and expressive with 6 occurences. While declarative was not found because there was not any declaration that could change the current condition.