EXPRESSIVE SPEECH ACTS ANALYSIS OF “THE SUPER MARIO BROS.” MOVIE

Abstract

This study aims to find the type of expressive speech acts, the meaning presented based on the actual context, and the most dominant type of expressive speech act used in “The Super Mario Bros.” movie script. This study was designed using descriptive qualitative method. By using Searle’s theory, the writer found that of 647 utterances uttered by all animation characters in “The Super Mario Bros.” movie, the writer took 64 utterances as the data described in the form of words, phrases and sentences that included in the expressive speech acts with data divided into 6 types of expressive speech acts according to Searle's theory (1976), with the distribution of data as follows: Expressive of Greeting consists of 13 data (20.31%); Expressive of Thanking occured in 5 data (7.81%); Expressive of Apologizing occured in 3 data (4.69%); Expressive of Congratulating occured in 5 data (7.81%); Expressive of Wishing of 15 data (23.44%); and Expressive of Attitudes as many as 23 data (35.94%). In this study, the writer found that the expressive of attitudes as the most dominant type of expressive speech act used in “The Super Mario Bros.” movie, it is because this movie is in the adventure and family genre so that it contains quite a lot of conflicts between characters in their journey, both between the protagonist and the antagonist, or the drama of family conflicts that occur between the protagonist and the supporting characters.