EEJ 7 (1) (2017) English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej THE TYPES AND POWER RELATION OF DIRECTIVE SPEECH ACTS IN CLASSROOM INTERACTION Trias Septianingsih, Warsono English Language Education Postgraduate Semarang State Univesity, Indonesia Article Info ________________ Article History: Recived 27 February 2017 Accepted 15 May 2017 Published 17 June 2017 ________________ Keywords: directive speech acts, classroom interaction, power relation. Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ Directive speech actsrefer to utterances produced bya speaker who wants the hearer to do something. This study aims to analyze the directive speech acts performed by lecturers and students, types of directive speech acts favoured by lecturers and students, the ways of directive speech acts related to the lecturer’s power. This study used directive speech acts theory proposed by Searle and Vanderveken (1985) and the theory of power proposed by Fairclough (1989) to analyze the data. The subjects of this study are collected from the lecturers and students of undergraduate program majoring in English Education. The result of this study showed that the lecturers used five types of directive speech acts in their classroom interactionsuch as requesting, suggesting, commanding, advising, and asking question. However, the students did not use directive speech act of advice. The most favoured directive speech acts used by the lesturers and the students was asking a question. The students asked questions when they did not understand the lesson or need answer to certain question. Directive speech acts were related to the lecturers’ power. It can be seen from the use of direct types of request, advice, and command. © 2017 Semarang State University Correspondence Address: Kampus Pascasarjana Unnes, Jalan Kelud Utara III Semarang 50237 E-mail: trias_septianingsih@yahoo.com p-ISSN 2087-0108 e-ISSN 2502-4566 Ira Indrawardana / Komunitas 4 (1) (2012) Trias Septianingsih & Warsono. / English Education Journal 7 (1) (2017) 26 33 IkaOktavianti/ Journal of Economic Education1 (2) (2012) Introduction Communication is an important thing because without communication, people cannot interact with other people, for example, parents, teacher, lecturers, students, friends, etc. In communication, the speaker has to be able to communicate effectively and understandably. It means that the hearer can understand what the speaker says. The speaker uses not only semantic meaning but also pragmatic meaning. Semantic meaning is the meaning based ontheir words or sentence but pragmatic meaning is implicit meaning. The researcher analyzed the data pragmatically and semantically. Pragmatics is to make more interesting, purposeful, and meaningful when the speaker interacts with another person. The study of pragmatics is important because people know what the speaker means.The speaker is usually performing the utterance by an act when she/he communicates with another person directly. Speech acts are the utterances that are produced by the speaker in doing an act. The speaker is performing several acts such as suggesting, requesting, commanding, advising, asking, and other acts when she/he produces an utterance.Searle (1985) classifies speech acts into five acts. They are assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative. In this study, the researcher focused on directive speech acts. Directive speech acts mean that the speaker wants the hearer to get or do something. According to Searle (1985), there are twenty-four directive speech acts. However, in this study, she chose five kinds of directive speech acts. They are request, command, suggestion, advice, and asking aquestion. She chose those kinds of directive speech acts because she thought that they happen in the classroom interaction. She also used the theory of Fairclough (1989) to analyze the lecturer’s power. Mey (2001: 120) states that directive speech act is an effort of the speaker to direct some goals of the hearer’s action. It means thatthe speaker has some goals by getting the hearer to do something. It can be concluded that a speaker performs a directive speech act whenhe/she performs the utterance and the hearer does an action after the speaker’s intention.Focusing specifically on the different speech acts included within the group of directives, Schmidt and Richards (1980), as cited in Flor (2005), claim that it contains speech acts such as requests, commands and suggestions, and the main goal is to get the hearer to do something, although the force of the attempt can differ from one speech act to another. Searle (1969: 66) states that a request is a directive speech act in which the speaker wants the hearer to do an action, and the speaker believes that hearer is able to do it. It means that the speaker produces an utterance about something and he/she wantsthe hearer to do an act.According to Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), there are three levels of directnesswhich are then subdivided into nine strategies of requests. The levels are direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect request. Each level of directness has some strategies. According to Searle (1969), suggestion belongs to the group of directives in which the speaker's aim is to get the hearer to commit him/herself in a future action. It means that the speaker wants the hearer to do an action in the future. Directive speech act of suggestion has some taxonomies. Thetaxonomies of suggestions are adopted by Flor (2005). There are three taxonomies of suggestion, such as direct, conventionally indirect, and indirect suggestions. There are twelve strategies of taxonomies of suggestion. According to Kreidler (1998), as cited in Widowati (2012), “a command is effective only if the speaker has some degree of control toward the action of the hearer”. Seale as cited in Widowati (2012) states that there are two types of command; they are direct and indirect command. Giving advice is regarded as a face threatening act although the speaker’s intentions do not hinder hearer’s freedom of action (Brown and Levinson, 1987).According to Alcon and Safont (2001), as cited in Flor (2003), there are three classifications of speech act, such as direct, conventionally indirect, and indirect advice. There are seven strategies of advice. According to Searle and Vanderveken (1985), asking has two uses, such as asking a question and asking someone to do something. According to Fairclaugh (1989: 3) stated that “power exist in various modalities, including the concrete and unmistakable modality of physical force”. He also stated that power is won, held and lost in thesocial struggle (Fairclough, 1989: 43). It means that people have power and it relates to the social struggles. In education, thelecturer has power when she/he teaches in the classroom. Classroom is the site for students struggle and oppositional practices but often lead the students to participate in their own domination. Ellis (1985) pointed out that classroom interaction both in the form of meaningful interaction and linguisticrule may influence the rate of acquisition. The lecturer can influence the kind of interaction that occurs in the classroom. There are some previous studies that are related to the directive speech acts. Arani (2012) conducted a study of directive speech acts used by Iranian nursery school children.This study analyzed the realization of directive speech acts in the types of imperatives, interrogatives, and declaratives.The results showed that the investigation of children’s directive speech acts confirms the fact that they are aware of social parameters of talk, they use linguistic forms that are different from what is used by adults as politeness marker, and they use declaratives with illocutionary force in order to mark distance. Another study is by Goddard (2002) who investigated directive speech acts in Malay (Bahasa Melayu).He analyzed the directive speech acts in cultural context. He found that there are several directive speech acts in Malay language. These are ordering, asking, inviting, reminding to or giving instruction, and advice. However, this study is different from those previous studies of directive speech acts. In this study, the researcher investigated the types and power relation of directive speech acts in the classroom interaction. There are five types of directive speech acts. They are requesting, suggesting, commanding, advising, and asking a question. In the classroom, the lecturers have more power than the students. The lecturers’ power would relate to the directive speech acts. The objectives of this study are 1) to analyze the directive speech acts performed by students and lecturers of Muhammadiyah University of Metro, Lampung in the classroom interaction, 2) to analyze types of directive speech acts favoured by lecturers and by students, and 3) to analyze the ways of directive speech acts relate to the lecturers’ power at Muhammadiyah University of Metro, Lampung. METHODS This study was descriptive qualitative. The setting of this study was undergraduate program majoring in English Education at Muhammadiyah University of Metro, Lampung. The researcher observed the lecturers and students in the classrooms. The unit of analysis was speech acts produced by lecturers and students in classroom interaction. There were five lecturers and fifty-two students. She used felicity condition of each type of directive speech act to analyze the types of directive speech acts used. The most favoured directive speech act used by lecturers and students could then be seen from the result of classifying the directive speech acts. Lecturer’s power could be seen from the use of direct, conventionally indirect, and indirect level of directive speech acts. RESULT AND DISCUSSION Directive Speech Acts Used by Lecturers and Students Directive speech acts are divided into several types. They are requesting, suggesting, commanding, advising, and asking.The following table shows the summary of directive speech acts used by students and lecturers in the classroom interaction. Table 1. Summary of Directive Speech Acts Used by Lecturers and Students The table of the summary above shows that there were 498 directive speech acts used by students and lecturers in the classroom interaction. It means that the five kinds of directive speech actwereused by lecturers. The students did not use directive speech act of advice. Following are the examples of the five kinds of directive speech acts. Request Request is a speech act which shows that the speaker wants the hearer to do an action.There are three types of request used by lecturer and students in the classroom interaction. They were direct and conventionally indirect request. The following are the examples of request. S1 : He has a girlfriend. Her name is Zusy. Zusy is amember of Miss A. You know? Ss : Ya. L : Finish? S1 : Yes, ma’am L : Okay, give question The researcher analyzed the utterance based on falicity condition. The propositional content of the italicized utterance was that the lecturer would ask the other students to give a question for the presenter. The preparatory condition was that the lecturer was able to ask the other students to give a question for the presenter. The condition of sincerity means that the lecturer wished that the other students gave a question for the presenter. The essential condition was that the lecturer wanted his utterance to count as a wish to give a question for the presenter. The italicized utterance above was direct request in the form of imperative strategy. It belongs to this strategy because the grammatical mood of the verb determines its illocutionary force. It can be seen in the word give came before the illocutionary force. The lecturer produced this utterance after the student presented her written task. They asked the other students to give a question for the presenter because she has finished for presenting her written task. The lecturers used directive speech act of request more frequently than the students in three types of request. Searle (1969: 66) stated that a request is a directive speech act in which the speaker wants the hearer to do an action, and the speaker believes that hearer is able to do it. The lecturers and the students who made a request believed that the hearer was able to do something that was requested. Suggestion Directive speech act of suggestion occurred 64 times in the classroom interaction. The researcher found only two types of suggestion, such as direct and conventionally indirect suggestion. S3 : And the last I say wassalamualaikumwahohmatullahiwabarokatuh Ss : Walaikumsalam warohmatullahiwabarokatuh. L : Okay. S3, It is a good presentation. Remember at the beginning when there is a conversation between Prophet Muhammad and Ali, Prophet Muhammad sees there and when you say, Ali, you look at the audience. You have still remembered that there is a good movement. Okay. Thank you S3. And the next S4. The conversation above came from the first classroom interaction. The propositional content of the italicized utterance was that the lecturer wished S3 to believe that she was in favor of remembering about the good movement. The preparatory condition was the lecturer assumed that it was possible for S3 to remember about the good movement. The sincerity condition was that the lecturer believed that it was a good idea for her to remember about the good movement. The essential condition was that the lecturer wanted her utterance to count as a suggestion to S3 to remember about .the good movement The utterance above belongs to the imperative strategy of direct suggestion because the utterance begins with the base form of a verb. It can be seen in the word Remember. The lecturer gave suggestion to S3 performance. S3 performed his story in front of the class. She suggestedS3 to remember about the good movement. Sheused this strategy to easily understand what she suggested. The lecturers were more dominant than students. However, the lecturers and students only used direct and conventionally indirect suggestion. As stated by Searle (1976), suggestion belongs to the group of directive speech act in which the speaker wants the hearer to perform the future act. The students and lecturers who gave suggestions wished the hearer to do an act in the future action. Command Directive speech act of command occurred 44 times in all classroom interactions.There are two types of command used by lecturers and students in the classroom interaction. They are direct and conventionally indirect command. L : Have you informed to your friend? S2 : (Gini ma’am, sebenernya). L : English, please. S2 : Actually, like this ma’am, emm, for this week, I don’t know when ( ) L : Have you told or informed to your friend that we have two meetings in this week? The conversation above belongs to the type of direct command. It was the conversation between student and lecturer. The lecturer asked the student about rescheduling because the lecturer did not come in the previous meeting. The student had different perception about what the lecturer said in the previous meeting. The direct command was implemented when S2 explained the problem. S2 did not use English when he explained the problem. The lecturer gave a direct command to him to speak English. S2 explained the problem to the lecturer by using English. Directive speech act of command is also used by a person who has authority or right. In relation to Chaika (1994:183),as cited in Widowati (2012), it was stated that the speaker has right or duty when he/she wants to command and the hearer has a responsibility to carry out the command. In this study, the researcher found that it was not only lecturers but also a student who used directive speech act of command. There was only one student who used directive speech act of command. He used it because they demanded something to the other students. Advice There were 32 times of the use of advice produced by the lecturers. The example of advice is as follow. S7 : I have one question for you, have you to be a good brother for your young brother? S3 : Exactly, I think I am not a good brother for him. I am so ( ) with him. I don’t know why because I know he is a calm boy, so I want him to change her personality, his personality. So, actually, I am not a good brother. But I want to be a good brother. I don’t have that time in the home. L : You should try to be a good brother. S3 : Yes, I try to be a good brother. The propositional content of italicized utterance was that the lecturer wished that S3 tried to be a good brother. The preparatory condition was that it was not obvious to the lecturer that S3 would try to be a good brother. The sincerity condition means that the lecturer believed that her advice to S3 to try to be a good brother would benefit S3. Furthermore, the essential condition mean that the lecturer intended her utterance to count as advice to S3. The italicized sentence is direct advice of declarative strategy because she used the word should. This conversation occurred when S3 would tell the story about her brother in front of the class. In the end of the story, S3asked his friends to asked something. In this case, S7 asked him, “have you to be a good brother for your young brother?” He explained about his young brother and he said that he was not a good brother for his young brother. Furthermore, the lecturer gave him advice that he should try to be a good brother for his young brother. S3 wanted to try to be a good brother. Directive speech act of advice was only used by the lecturers when they taught in the classroom because it can be used by someone who has authority. As stated by Wardhough (1985) and Tsui (1994), as cited in Flor (2003) that the people who have authority or right can give advice to the other people. The lecturers used their authority to give the advice to develop the students’ knowledge and to improve their ability in speaking English. The lecturers did not use indirect advice because they hope that the students could understand more about their advice to them. Ask Question Directive speech act of asking question occurred 286 times. Searle and Vanderveken (1985) said that in asking a question the hearer performs something to the speaker and the form is determined by the speaker who requires the hearer to answer the question. The researcher found that the lecturers and students mostly used directive speech act of asking a question in classroom interaction, but in a different context. S7 : Who is he? S12 : Emm.. my father L : How tall is your father? S12 : Emm.. I don’t know The propositional content of the first utterance “who is he?” was that S7 required S12 to answer her question about the person who S12 mean. The second utterance was that the lecturer required S12 to answer her question about his father’s tall. The preparatory condition was that S7 did not know what S12 answers to those questions were. The sincerity condition of those utterances was that the lecturer and S7 intended S12 to answer the questions. The essential condition was that the lecturer and S7 wanted to get the information about the person who S12 means and his father’s tall. The italicized utterances above belong to the WH question. It can be seen in the first word, that are who and how. S12 described someone who is special for him in front of the class. After describing someone, he asked his friends to give question if they wanted to know about the story. S7 did not understand the person who S12 described because he did not describe clearly. The lecturer wanted to know how tall his father because he did not tell his story. The Most Favoured Directive Speech Acts Used by Lecturers and Students The most favoured directive speech acts used by lecturers and students were asking a question, but it was used in different contexts. The lecturers asked a question to the students when they wanted to know the students understanding. The lecturers asked a question to the students by using some kinds of questions. They used WH question, yes/no question or their questions were only to clarify the student's answer. Based on the findings, sometimes, the lecturers did not use auxiliary verb in the beginning of the question. For example, the lecturer said “Enough?”, it means that the lecturer wanted to clarify whether their answer or suggestion is enough or not and there was not anauxiliary verb in that question. This utterance had the same meaning with Is it enough? The lecturer did not use this expression because they produced it directly and they eliminated the auxiliary verb. They used directive speech act of asking thequestion more frequently than the students. It means that they hoped the students could understand the material better. The students asked a question to the lecturers or teachers to know the right answer to the question. Actually, they required the lecturer’s answer because they really did not know the answer. They not only asked questions to the lecturers but also to the other students who presented of performed in front of the class. They asked aquestion to them after they presented or performed something. They did it because they did not understand their explanation. The lecturers used directive speech act of asking question more frequently than the students. It means that they hoped the students could understand the material better. However, the students asked a question to the lecturers or teachers to know the right answer of the question. Actually, they required the lecturer’s answer because they really did not know the answer. They not only asked questions to the lecturers but also to the other students who presented of performed in front of the class. They asked question to them after they presented or performed something. They did it because they did not understand their explanation. Directive Speech Acts Relate to the Lecturer’s Power in the Classroom Interaction. Based on table 4.1, mostly the lecturers used directive speech act of asking a question. Fairclough (1989:46) gave an example between doctor and medical student. He found that doctor used directive speech act of asking the question because he/she has right to ask a question and the students have only obligation to comply and answer the question. In this study, the researcher found that the lecturers were more frequent in the use of asking questions than the students. The lecturers used their power when they produced those five kinds of directive speech acts in the classroom interaction. It can be seen from the fact that lecturers used each kind of directive speech act directly and conventionally indirectly. The lecturers used direct request, command, and advice during the teaching and learning process. Mostly, they used conventionally indirect suggestion than direct suggestion. For asking question, there is no types/level of asking question but the researcher could see from the use of question. They used WH question and yes/no question. However, the use of yes/no question was not based on the correct form. They eliminated auxiliary verb and sometimes the subject. However, the students did not use it. It meant that the lecturers have more power than the students and they used it in the classroom interaction. The lecturers used their power totally when they interacted with their students in the classroom. It can be seen from the use of those directive speech acts in the classroom interaction. The lecturers have the right or power to give command, request, advice, suggestion, and to ask the students. The students have an only obligation or responsibility to comply, do, or answer what the lecturer wanted. CONCLUSION The lecturers used the five directive speech acts in the classroom interaction. They were requesting, suggesting, commanding, advising, and asking questions. However, the students did not use directive speech act of advice in the classroom interaction. The most favoured directive speech acts used by the lecturers and the students was asking questions. The use of asking questions by the lecturers and students was in different contexts. The students asked a question when they did not know the answer, but the lecturers wanted to check the students’ understanding or the students’ answer to questions. The researcher found that the use of directive speech was related to power. In this study, the lecturer had more power than the students. Mostly, the lecturers used direct types of request, command, and advice. However, the lecturers used conventionally indirect suggestion more than the other types of suggestion in the classroom interaction. The lecturers asked questions to the students by using WH question and yes/no question. The lecturers used anincomplete sentence when they required yes/no answer. However, she did not find the students who used this form because if they used it to ask aquestion to the lecturer, it may sound impolite. It means that directive speech acts were related to the lecturers’ power. It can be seen from the use of direct types of each kind of directive speech act in the classroom interaction. For the next researchers, it is hoped that a deeper investigation can be done to investigate directive speech acts related with the social distance or other variables. REFERENCES Arani, Shohreh. 2012. A Study of Directive Speech Acts Used by Irian Nursery School Children: The Impact of Context on Children’s Linguistic Choices. International Journal Applied Linguistic and Language Literature.1/5: 163-175. Blum-Kulka, Shana and Elite Olstain. 1984. Requests and Apologies:A Crosscultural Study of Speech Act Realization Pattern (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics. 5/3. Brown, P, and Levinson. 1987. 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