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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelSpeech acts is the basic unit of communication. If the addressee cannot
catch what actually the addresser means or the addressee cannot catch the speech
act of the addresser, it often causes misunderstanding that sometimes lead into
humor. Speech act and language function cannot be separated because language
function is used to high light speech acts.
In this study, the writer wants to analyze the locutionary, illocutionary,
perlocutionary acts, and the language function of the utterances in the
illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. The writer is also curious to know what
makes the conversations in ?Laughter, the Best Medicine? become humorous. She
assumed that the humorous utterances were caused by misunderstanding between
the participants. Thus, the writer uses Schiffrin?s theory (1994) of speech acts to
explain the locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Moreover,
the writer also uses Kennedy?s theory (2003) to explain the language function.
The data were divided based on the edition of Reader?s Digest. After classifying
the data, the writer analyzed the jokes that were in the form of dialogues only by
describing the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. The next step
was describing the language function for each utterance. Finally, the writer
explained the cause of humor of those conversations.
From her analysis, the writer found out that the types of illocutionary act
occurred were informatives, directives, and expressives. Moreover, the cause of
the humor was not only because the hearer failed to catch the intended meaning of
the speaker, but also because the hearer successfully caught what the intended
meaning of the speaker was.