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Speech acts in the conflict between husband and wife in the Wild Duck

Language is used to communicate with others. However, when we say
something, sometimes the hearer cannot get the implicit meanings of the speaker?s
utterances so the hearer does not do as what the speaker expects. This condition
encourages the writer to increase her awareness of the study of the speech acts theory
focusing on the locution, illocution, and perlocution. Austin considers that to say
something may be to do something and concludes that in uttering, one can perform
three acts simultaneously: locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.
The three questions that the writer tries to answer are: 1) What are the locutionary
meanings of Hjalmar?s utterances and Gina?s utterances that occur within the
conflict; 2)What are the illocutionary meanings of Hjalmar?s utterances and Gina?s
utterances that occur within the conflict; 3) What are the perlocutions in response to
Hjalmar and Gina?s utterances. The writer chooses The Wild Duck as her source of
data because The Wild Duck is an interesting drama and she has seen the drama
herself. And the problems or conflicts in The Wild Duck are a kind of conflict or
problem which might happen in our life, too. In this study, the writer limits her study
to two acts from five acts presented. However, not every utterance in the act that
contains conflicts. The writer only analyses the utterances that contains conflicts or
there are opposition or verbal disputes between the two speakers. She takes two acts
only because only these acts are relevant to the conflict between husband and wife,
while the other acts are not. In this study, she focuses on the layers of meanings
which can cause conflicts. To answer the problems, she uses the speech acts theory
focusing on the locution, illocution, and perlocution and also the theory of context
and topic in analysing her data. She uses descriptive qualitative research method to
describe the locution, illocution, and perlocution in The Wild Duck. Having analyzed
the data, she finds and concludes that conflict can happen because the locution of
someone?s utterance is different from the illocution and the response is also different
from the expected response. The next finding is in uttering something, someone?s
illocution can be the same as the locution. Besides, one locution may have more that
one illocution, expected responses and responses.