SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS OF KAMALA HARRIS’S VICTORY SPEECH AND ITS CONTRIBUTION FOR TEACHING PRAGMATICS

Abstract

Pragmatics is considered as a relatively new branch in the world of linguistics. It is not until the 1950s that the linguists finally found a way to study meanings in relation to the context, and they name it pragmatics (Trask, 2007: 226). In this study, the writer analyzed the speech act of Kamala Harris’s Victory Speech. Kamala Harris, U.S Vice President-elect gave her victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday. Harris reflected on the women generations who said have set the path for the present time. The objectives of the study were 1) to identify the kinds of speech acts used in Kamala Harris victory speech. 2) to find out the dominant illocutionary act found in Kamala Harris victory speech. The data is the speech acts found in the video of Kamala Harris’ victory speech uploaded by CNN News Official YouTube Channel on 8 November, 2020. To achieve the objectives of the study, relevant theories were discussed. This study employed both speech act theories from Austin (1962) and Searle (1969). Then the result showed that the kinds of illocutionary speech acts used in Kamala Haris’s victory speech were assertive, commissive, expressive, directive, and declaration. The dominant illocutionary act used was assertive with 52%, the second was expressive with 36%, then commissive with 6%, and last were directive and declaration which each had 3%. the study could be presented in pragmatics classes by students or lecturers as an example of how to analysis speech acts from a real speech and the object of this study can be discussed  further in pragmatics  classes as an authentic material that its aspects  other  than  speech  acts  are  able  to  be  analyzed.  By presenting an example from the speech such as the object of this study which is Kamala Harris’s victory speech in 2020 United States presidential election, the students could have a better understanding about the material that the lecturers presented.