AN ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACT ON WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) PRESS CONFERENCE

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.