An Analysis of Directive Speech Act in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Movie

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the types of directive speech acts found in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom movie and to explain how the types of directive speech acts in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom movie. This thesis used qualitative-descriptive method with the Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom movie as the source of data, and the data in this study in the form of utterances that contain directive speech act. The theory used to analyze the data is directive speech act theory of command, request, permission, prohibition, and question proposed by Searle. The findings of this study consisted of the utterances found in the Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom movie that can be considered as directive speech act types and tries to realize in the movie. There are fourty five utterances found in the movie of which fourteen are commands, nine are requests, seven are permissions, five are prohibitions, and ten are questions. These types of directive speech acts are realized through various linguistic forms such as imperative utterances for commands, request, permission, prohibition and question. The utterances can be interpreted using John Searle’s directive speech acts theory of types and realized.