Speech Acts in Written Advertisements

Abstract

Austin (1962) states that language is not only used to say something but to do something which he identified as linguistic or speech acts.  Speech act is an integral part of any communicative situation involving a speaker, hearer, and there are many kinds of acts associated with the speaker’s utterances such as making statements, asking questions, giving orders, greeting and warning. Speech act is effectively implemented in advertisement since it is a form of communication that intended to persuade audiences (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some actions upon products, ideas or even services. Advertisement is classified into two, commercial and non-commercial based. The latter is also known as public service advertisement or public service announcement. This kind of advertisement is only available to nonprofit organization (government).This initial research analyses data presented in public service advertisement especially the one which is related to the social issues on the environment, how to keep the environment clean and keep motivating and persuading community awareness against a number of environment problems for the betterment of life. The data was collected through documentation and observation methods. The analysis based on the theories of speech act and advertisement. The results of the analysis show there are 3 types of speech acts in the data. The speech acts are in the form of clauses and sentences.  The results of the analysis also show how the media of advertisements implemented and maximized speech acts to the viewers, listeners, and readers (target audiences) in motivating public awareness on the cleanliness environment by using different class of words (noun, verb, adjective).