A Study of Commissive Speech Acts: A Case of Jakarta Gubernatorial Candidate Debate

Abstract

The study dealt with the analysis of commissive speech acts realized in Jakarta Gubernatorial candidate debate. The objectives of this study were to investigate the sub-categories of commissive speech act used in gubernatorial candidate debate and to describe its strategy. This study applied the qualitative research with using content and analysis design. The data were gotten from the debate utterances about commissive speech act. Those data were analyzed by using Miles and Huberman analysis model including data reduction, data display, conclusion and verification. The research finding showed that there were six sub-categories of commissive speech act found in this research namely pledging, refrain, offering, promising, intending and refusing. It was also found that there were two strategies of commissive speech act used in Jakarta Gubernatorial candidate debate, those were direct and indirect speech act. In conclusion, not all the subcategories of commissive speech act were realized in this research, while in terms of strategy, the two kinds of commissive speech act strategy were applied.