AN ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACT OF COMMANDING AS FOUND IN AMERICAN HISTORY X MOVIE

Abstract

The research studies speech of commanding in the American History X movie. The study focuses
on speech act of commanding and Politeness strategy. The aim is to analyze the speech act of
commanding and politeness strategies used. Some theories used in analyzing the data are Searle
(1969), Brown and Levinson (1987), and Bonvillain (2003). The writer found direct and indirect
speech act, and also four types the politeness strategies used, they are bald on record, positive
politeness, negative politeness and bald off record.

Keywords: speech act, commanding, politeness strategy.