AN ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACT OF COMPLAINING FOUND IN THE MOVIE T HE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

Abstract

As seen in the society, complaining often occurs if the people feel disatisfied or disappointed
with the reality that is not suitable as they want. The complaints that exist in reality can be
seen in the movie. Therefore, this study aims to find out the speech act of complaining
uttered in the movie. The data of this thesis were taken from the dialogues in the movie
entitle The Pursuit of Happyness. According to Searle, J. R. (1969) there are five macroclasses
of speech, they are representative, directive, expressive, commisive, declarative.
Complaining is one of kinds of expressive speech act that express psychological state. In this
thesis the writer only focus to analyze the types of expressive speech act interms of
complaining, and the communication strategies used by the speakers in complaining. The
writer used the theory stated by Searle, J. R (1975) in analyzing the types of speech act and
the theory stated by Brown and Levinson (1987) in anlyzing the communication strategies,
and some contexts proposed by Crabtree (1991). From the data analysis, the writer found four
types of speech act of complaining in terms of direct and literal, direct and non-literal,
indirect and literal, and indirect and non-literal expressions.

Keywords: speech act, complaining, communication strategy.