Abstract:
This study intends to analyse the conversation of World Health Organization (WHO)
Press Conference from the pragmatic viewpoint of speech act. The objective of study
was to investigate the types of illocutionary act, to discover the dominant types and to
figure out the reason of using the dominant type. The qualitative research was applied in
this research and the data is in the form of utterance. One of video taken from the
official youtube of WHO were randomly selected with duration around 51 minutes and
aired on 21 April 2021. Searle‟s (1976) speech acts theory was applied to analyse the
illocutionary act use in press conference. There were 64 data indicate illocutionary act
with the specification ; Assertive found 37 data (58%), directive 7 data (11%),
commissive 5 data (8%), expressive 15 data (23%), and there is no declarative found in
the conversation. The result indicate the most dominant type in conversation of press
conference is assertive. Assertive consider as the most appropriate type to the function
and necessity of press conference. By using assertive, speaker convey and deliver the
information obviously.
