Assertive Illocutionary Act Adapted in Donald Trump’s Political Speech: A Pragmatic Study

Abstract

This research is intended to discuss the illocutionary acts used in a speech mainly assertive. The writer attempts to analyze the categories of assertive illocutionary act occurs in the utterances of Donald Trump’s political speech in last America’s general election. This is a case study that employed a qualitative method with a descriptive approach. The writer uses Ancont software to classify the data. The function of this software is to observe the frequent words occur in the data. Then, it shows that the total number of words that occurred in Donald Trump’s speech is 3046 words. Through those numbers, there are 901 types of words. However, the data used is only the open classes instead of the closed class words or grammatical category. After reducing the data, the five frequent words which are categorized as an open class appeared are ‘job’, ‘is’, ‘new’, ‘American’, and ‘are’. In this case, the data are analyzed based on the frequents words and the writer also reduces the data which are not categorized as assertive illocutionary acts. From the data analysis, it reveals that the categories of assertive illocutionary acts mostly appeared in Donald Trump’s political speech are a statement of fact and assertion. Then, the dominant category used in the speech is a statement of fact containing a convincing. It can be concluded that most of the utterances used by Donald Trump are, besides attempting to represent himself, to convince the citizens supported by some facts about the issue that he believes to be the case in order to establish a positive perspective toward his arguments.

Illocutionary Acts and Contextual Utterances in the Movie Raya and the Last Dragon

“…In addition, the results of this study have differences and similarities to research conducted by (Ramadhani et al, 2019), which found that assertiveness is the most common type of illocutionary act.…”

“…The researchers used the theories from Searle (1975) and Hymes (1977), and the result showed the dominant use of illocutionary act in the movie was directive. The third research that also discussed the illocutionary act was conducted by (Ramadhani, Indrayani, & Soemantri, 2019). The study mainly focused on observing the frequent category of assertive in Donald Trump's speech.…”

Illocutionary Speech Acts used by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. during the 2022 and 2023 State of the Nation Address

“…In another study by Ramadhani et al (2019) on a speech of Donald Trump, through analysis, Trump's political speech is a statement of assertion and fact where he attempts to represent himself and convince citizens with facts about the problem that he believes to be the case to establish a positive image toward his arguments. Larasati et al (2020) concluded in their Illocutionary Speech Acts analysis of Trump's Presidential Candidacy Speech that he mainly produced the assertive type of Illocutionary Acts in his speech.…”

Assertive Act Found in Desmond Doss’s Conversation on “Hacksaw Ridge” Movie by Mel Gibson

“…Next, the research was done by (Ramadhani, Indrayani, & Soemantri, 2019). Their research also the same to analyzse the type or categories of assertive acts found in Donald Trrump's political speech.…”