434 Copyright © 2023 The Author IDEAS is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 License Issued by English study program of IAIN Palopo IDEAS Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) Volume 11, Number 1, June 2023 pp. 434 - 444 An Analysis of Directive Speech Acts in “XO, Kitty” Television Series Kristin Enjelina Sidabutar1, Mhd. Johan2 pb171210025@upbatam.ac.id1 thorshid@mail.com2 Department of English Literature, University of Putera Batam, Batam, Indonesia Received: 2023-04-27 Accepted: 2023-07-17 DOI: 10.24256/ideas.v11i1.3997 Abstract This research aimed to reveal directive speech acts performed in “XO, Kitty” Television series which were shown in the characters’ dialogues. The objective of this research was identifying the types of directive speech act. Directive speech acts is about getting other people to do some certain actions that the speaker intended to, and it has several types which are commanding, requesting, asking, permitting, advising, inviting, and prohibiting (Searle, 1979). Also, descriptive qualitative research theorized by Creswell (2014) was applied in this research. In addition, the observational method and non-participatory technique by Sudaryanto (2015) were applied for collecting the data. Next, analyzing data was done by applying the “Metode padan” and “Teknik pilah pembeda” by Sudaryanto (2015). The result of this research showed that there were seven types of directive speech act revealed with 14 data found consisted of 2 data of commanding, 2 data of requesting, 4 data of asking, 1 data of permitting, 2 data of advising, 2 data of inviting, and 1 data of prohibiting. Last, the highest type of directive speech act found in the research was asking, and the least found were permitting and prohibiting. Keywords: directive speech act; pragmatics; television series Introduction An effective communication is one of the ways how a person connects with other people in society. Additionally, it has function to let people deliver their messages, also the other people may do some particular actions based on the messages. Therefore, there is a study called Pragmatics that concerns about the meaning of the words that uttered by speaker also the interpretation by hearer (Yule, 1996). Furthermore, there are some fields of study in Pragmatics, and one of them is speech acts. There are some speech acts, including directive speech acts. Directive speech acts is about getting other people to do some certain actions that the speaker intended to (Searle, 1979). There is a phenomenon of directive speech acts found in accompany meeting as below. Company Director : “please show me the salesreport.” http://u.lipi.go.id/1457703302 mailto:pb171210025@upbatam.ac.id1 mailto:thorshid@mail.com2 IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 435 Sales Manager : “Yes, sir." In the conversation above, the company director was the speaker, and the sales manager was the hearer. The speaker intended to see the sales report by commanding the hearer to show the report. Next, the hearer followed the command by showing the report. By seeing the report, the speaker could understand if the sales progress or result was good. A command in an utterance can be categorized as a directive speech acts. From the phenomena above, it showed directive speech acts can be found in certain utterances because it has some typical characteristics. The characteristics of directive speech acts are not commanding only, but there are also some characteristics too. Generally, directive speech acts can be identified by speaker’s utterances. Based on Searle (1979),directive speech acts have some types as below. a. Commanding Commanding requires the speaker to be on a certain position or level to have an authority or power for giving command to the hearer (Searle, 1979). Hearer is not given an option to refuse the speaker’s order in this type. Commanding also can be a direction for someone to do or not do something. Sometimes, commanding can be identified by the using of imperative sentences in the utterances, example is shown as below. “Look! They’re responding!” (Fitria, 2019) b. Requesting Requesting is different with commanding. The hearer is allowed to refuse or fulfil the speaker’s demand because it does not have any relation with the speaker’s or hearer’s power (Searle, 1979). Generally, requesting can be identified when the speaker asks for some help to the hearer. Therefore, it is mostly uttered politely by the speaker. One of requesting examples is shown as below. “Please, help. My daughter!” (Amanda & Marlina, 2018) c. Asking Another type of directive speech act is asking. Asking contains of question by the speaker to the hearer (Searle, 1979). The question could be a yes-no question, or it needs a clear explanation from the hearer. Sometimes, the question also can be asking someone to do something for the speaker too. It depends on the speaker whether it only needs an answer from speaker without doing some actions or the hearer needs to do some actions before giving the answer. The example of asking is as below. “Who’s absent today?” (Suryandani & Budasi, 2021) d. Permitting Permitting is also type of directive speech act. Permitting is occurred when someone agrees or approves a permission by other people to do something (Searle, 1979). Additionally, an utterance also can be classified as permitting if itis kind of Kristin Enjelina Sidabutar, Mhd. Johan An Analysis of Directive Speech Acts in “XO, Kitty” Television Series 436 forgiving, allowing, dismissing, or releasing. Furthermore, the example is shown as below. “Ugh, well come on in, rest your haunches for a minute” (Kumala & Rohmah, 2021) e. Advising Advising is found when the speaker gives the idea of an action that they believe may be beneficial to the hearer or interested by the hearer (Searle, 1979). Often, advising contains the idea or conclusion by the speaker. In this type, the hearer does not have obligation to do or not do the advice. The example of advising directive speech act is shown as below. “You should worry about yourself, Abu Sufyan.” (Yuniati et al., 2018) f. Inviting Inviting is a speech act which showing the speaker encourages or invites the hearer to do some actions (Searle, 1979). In this type, the hearer may accept or reject the invitation. It depends how the speaker persuades or influenced the hearer to do the actions. The example of inviting can be seen as below. “Let’s go down to the river, and cut a lot of news fish-poles” (Fitriyah, 2022) g. Prohibiting Prohibiting occurs when the speaker prohibits the hearer to do some particular things (Searle, 1979). The speaker has intention to forbid or prevent the hearer to do some certain things for whatever the reason is. Furthermore, the example is shown as below. “Postpone activities involving many participants”(Sari &Utomo, 2020) Directive speech acts is found not only in real life, but also in movies, novels, or television series. Nowadays, television series can be streamed online too. There is a streaming service called Netflix where variety of films, television series, and many more. Based on Surette & Connolly (2023), there are several best television shows on May 2023, and one of them is “XO, Kitty”. “XO, Kitty” is an American romantic comedy drama that tells about a teenager’s complex relationship. It is a spin-off series of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and it is also appeared in top 10 shows must watch in Netflix. In the dialogues of this television series, the researchers realized there were some directive speech acts applied by the characters. For example, it is shown as below. Dan Covey (S) : “What’s this about, Kitty?” Kitty (H) : “There'll be time for questions at the end.” The utterance by Dan Cover as the speaker contains question to Kitty as the hearer. The speaker’s question was related to a presentation showed by the hearer because he was not sure about what the hearer’s intention for showing the presentation. According to Searle (1979), asking is a speech act which is found when the speaker gives question to hearer. Therefore, the utterance above can be IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 437 categorized as directive speech act of asking. From the phenomena showed in one of “XO, Kitty” scenes above, it can be stated that the characters of “XO, Kitty” Television series performed directive speech acts.The questions in this research were how many types of directive speech act in “XO, Kitty” Television series and which type was the most applied in the dialogues of “XO, Kitty” Television series. For that reason, this research had the objectives to identify and examine the applied directive speech acts types in “XO, Kitty” Television series which consists of 10 episodes. There were directive speech acts research done by previous researchers. First, Virginia & Ambalegin (2021)identified the directive speech acts types in “I Care a Lot” Movie. They applied the theory by Searle (1979) and they also used the method of descriptive qualitative research in their research. The result showed that the data related to directive speech acts were 15 utterances, and asking was the highest type among all the types found in the research. Second, there was a study of directive speech act in “Onward” film byKumala & Rohmah (2021). The research was done by applying the theory of Searle (1969). The descriptive-qualitative method was also applied in the research. Next, the result of the study revealed there were six types of directive speech acts performed in the film. Finally, the most dominant types found were requests and questions. The similarity of previous research and present research were the objective of the research. The objective of the previous research and present research were identifying and analyzing the types of directive speech acts. Also, the previous research and present research were applying the theory of Searle. However, the difference of previous research and present research was the data source because present research used “XO, Kitty” Television series as the data source. As there were directive speech act performed by the characters in the data source, the researchers were interested to identify and investigate directive speech act types that applied in “XO, Kitty” Television series by applying the theory Searle (1979). Method This research implemented descriptive qualitative research. Descriptive qualitative research is a study that applicable for case study, phenomenology, and grounded theory Creswell (2014). Therefore, descriptive qualitative research is applicable in this research because this research applied the study of phenomena in society which performed by the characters in the data source. The observational method and non-participatory technique by Sudaryanto (2015)were applied for collecting data which done by observing the dialogues of data source without involving in the dialogues. There were three steps for collecting data from the data source. First, the researchers searched the “XO, Kitty” Television series by streaming Netflix. Second, the transcript was downloaded by the researchers. Third, the researchers watched the “XO, Kitty” Television series while underlined the transcript which related to directive speech acts. The collected data were analyzed by applying “Metode padan” and “Teknik pilah pembeda” by Sudaryanto (2015). Next, the researchers analyzed the directive speech acts types according to theory by Searle (1979). Three steps were done in analyzing the data, first the researchers identified & classified the underlined Kristin Enjelina Sidabutar, Mhd. Johan An Analysis of Directive Speech Acts in “XO, Kitty” Television Series 438 utterances on transcript which related to directive speech act. Second, the researchers analyzed the data according to the directive speech act types. Last, the researchers concluded the highest type of directive speech act applied and presented it descriptively. Results The research showed the directive speech act types performed in “XO, Kitty” Television series. Total of 14 utterances were found and all of them were related to directive speech act. The types of directive speech act were commanding, requesting, asking, permitting, advising, inviting, and prohibiting. Below table is the total of directive speech acts found in “XO, Kitty” Television series. Table 1. the total of directive speech acts found in “XO, Kitty” Television series Types Utterances Total Commanding “Report to the library after school. They'll you assign a tutor.” “Everybody, get back to your dorms!” 2 Requesting “I need you to sit with Lee.” “Can you... tell me what to do?” 2 Asking “What’s this about, Kitty?” “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?” “How did you not get caught?” “Did you make up with Dae?” 4 Permitting “You can go.” 1 Advising “I'd move the barrette up a little higher.” “Kitty, you should move.” 2 Inviting “We should have dinner.” “Let's get your blood pumping. Let's do some jumping jacks. Okay?” 2 Prohibiting “Don't touch anything!” 1 Total 14 Discussion Commanding Data 1 Lee (S) : “Report to the library after school. They'll you assign a tutor.” Kitty (H) : “I'm pretty sure that there…” (Scene in episode 3, 00:15:10-00:15:20) The utterance of directive speech act above occurred when a teacher namely Lee gave a command to his student namely Kitty. In this conversation, Lee as the speaker command Kitty as the hearer to report to library and get tutored because Kitty’s grade was not good enough. The hearer could not reject the command that the speaker uttered as the speaker was right, moreover the speaker had the right to command the hearer to study harder. Therefore, the utterance above was considered as the type of directive speech act called commanding. IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 439 Data 2 Alex (S) : “Everybody, get back to your dorms!” Min Ho (H) : “Alex. Thank God you're here!” (Scene in episode 6, 00:21:43 –00:21:51) This dialogue occurred when Alex as the speaker saw all his students were having party in a club. The students were not allowed to have party in a club. Therefore, he commanded all the students to get back to their dorms. However, the music was too loud, and only one of his students namely Min Ho who heard him. Min Ho as the hearer had been requesting his friends to end the party but no one listened to him. Once he saw the speaker came, he felt thankful as his friends would follow the speaker’s command. As the result, the utterance above can be considered as commanding type of directive speech act. Requesting Data 3 Kitty (S) : “I need you to sit with Lee.” Min Ho (H) : “That sounds like a you problem.” (Scene in episode 5, 00:17:23 –00:17:26) The utterance above was spoken by Kitty to Min Ho as the hearer. The speaker requested the hearer to sit with their teacher namely Lee. The request was able to be rejected or granted by the hearer because they both were friends. Next, the hearer granted the speaker’s request with a purpose to help the speaker. Finally, the utterance is classified as type of directive speech act which is requesting. Data 4 Dae (S) : “Can you... tell me what to do?” Kitty (H) : “The Dae I used to know would have figured that out for himself.” (Scene in episode 8, 00:15:50 –00:15:59) The conversation above happened when Dae as the speaker requested Kitty as the hearer to tell him how Kitty could forgive her. In this scene, the hearer did a mistake and he had apologized. However, the hearer still could not forgive him. Therefore, the speaker needed to know how the hearer could forgive him by asking the hearer to tell him what to do. Since the hearer rejected to give answer to the speaker, the utterance by speaker is considered as requesting which is a type of directive speech act. Asking Data 5 Dan (S) : “What’s this about, Kitty?” Kitty (H) : “There'll be time for questions at the end.” (Scene in episode 1, 00:02:43 –00:02:45) Kristin Enjelina Sidabutar, Mhd. Johan An Analysis of Directive Speech Acts in “XO, Kitty” Television Series 440 The utterances above were spoken by Dan Covey as the speaker and Kitty as the hearer. The relationship between them were a father and daughter. The speaker uttered the question above while Kitty was showing a presentation in the living room. The speaker asked about the purpose of the hearer’s action. Even though the hearer did not give the answer directly, the speaker’s utterance had performed the type of directive speech act which is asking. Data 6 Alex (S) : “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?” Kitty (H) : “Nevermind.” (Scene in episode 2, 00:02:00–00:02:04) The conversation above occurred when Alex as the speaker saw Kitty as the hearer was crying. At that moment, the speaker did not know why the hearer cried. Because the speaker was a teacher at the school, he thought that he should do something when he saw his student cried. Therefore, he asked if the hearer was alright. As asking is a type of directive speech act, the utterance by the speaker is classified as directive speech act. Data 7 Min Ho (S) : “How did you not get caught?” Madison (H) : “Please, I've snuck out of every window of every boarding school from here to Antarctica.” (Scene in episode 7, 00:07:15 –00:07:20) The dialogues above were uttered by Min Ho as the speaker and Madison as the hearer. They both were in library because the speaker was on detention and the hearer accompanied him. The speaker was curious how the hearer was the only person who did not get caught while all of their classmates got caught including the speaker himself. Thus, the speaker asked the hearer by uttering question. The utterance by the speaker is categorized as directive speech act with the type of asking. Data 8 Min Ho (S) : “Did you make up with Dae?” Kitty (H) : “Yes.” (Scene in episode 10, 00:27:30–00:27:32) The utterance above was uttered by Min Ho as the speaker when Kitty as the hearer and he were on a flight. In this scene, actually the speaker fell in love with the hearer and he had intention to know if the hearer had made up with Dae, the hearer’s ex-lover. Thereby, the speaker asked the hearer about it. The action of giving question by the speaker is classified as type of directive speech act which is asking. IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 441 Permitting Data 9 Dan (S) : “You can go.” Kitty (H) : “I can? I can? Oh, my God, thank you! Thank you! I love you!” (Scene in episode 1, 00:05:58 –00:06:01) The utterance of permitting above was spoken by Dan as the hearer. Dan was the father of Kitty, the hearer. Previously, the hearer planned to study abroad and she was asking the speaker’s approval. At first, the speaker did not agree with the hearer’s idea. At the end, the speaker agreed and gave the hearer permission to study abroad. Finally, the utterance above is considered as the type of directive speech act which is permitting. Advising Data 10 Quincy (S) : “I'd move the barrette up a little higher.” Kitty (H) : “Thanks.” (Scene in episode 3, 00:03:03 – 00:03:06) The dialogues above were uttered by Quency as the speaker and Kitty as the hearer. In the conversation, the hearer was trying to use a barrette on her hair. When the speaker saw it, the speaker advised the hearer to move the barrette because it would look better. As the result, the utterance by the speaker is categorized as advising type of directive speech act. Data 11 Dae (S) : “Kitty, you should move. You can't live with that girl anymore.” Kitty (H) : “I tried to move. There are no other rooms.” (Scene in episode 4, 00:23:04 –00:23:10) The conversation above occurred when the speaker and hearer found that the hearer’s roommate recorded the hearer sleeping and uploaded it on internet. Therefore, the speaker was worried and advised the hearer to move out from the dorm. The advice purposed to protect the hearer from the bad roommate. For that reason, the utterance above is classified as type of directive speech act called advising. Inviting Data 12 Kitty (S) : “We should have dinner. I mean, you should come to the dinner. That I'm planning on campus for all of us expats. Like a Friendsgiving.” Alex (H) : “You may have failed this, but you just aced being a great person. Thinking of others who have nowhere to go, cooking a massive feast...” (Scene in episode 5, 00:05:11 –00:05:20) Kristin Enjelina Sidabutar, Mhd. Johan An Analysis of Directive Speech Acts in “XO, Kitty” Television Series 442 The dialogues above were uttered by Kitty as the speaker and Alex as the hearer. The speaker wanted to discuss something with the hearer, so she found an idea to invite the hearer to a dinner where she had not planned before. The utterance that the speaker uttered showed the invitation to the hearer. Therefore, it can be categorized as inviting type of directive speech act. Data 13 Quincy (S) : “Let's get your blood pumping. Let's do some jumping jacks. Okay?” Kitty (H) : “Yeah.” (Scene in episode 9, 00:14:18 –00:14:21) The utterance by the speaker occurred when the hearer told the speaker about how she lost the passion to study. For that reason, the speaker uttered the words with purpose to invite the hearer for doing jumping jacks. After the dialogues above, both of them were doing jumping jacks together. Therefore, the utterance by the speaker is categorized as inviting type of directive speech act. Prohobiting Data 14 Min Ho (S) : “Don't touch anything. Got a method.” Kitty (H) : “You know, you are the last person that I would expect to know how to cook.” (Scene in episode 5, 00:10:17 – 00:10:23) The dialogues above occurred when Min Ho as the speaker and Kitty as the hearer were in kitchen. The speaker was cooking while the hearer was opening a lid of a pan. At that moment, the speaker prohibited the hearer to touch the lid of the pan because he did not want the hearer messed the food that he had cook. For that reason, the utterance of the speaker is considered as type of directive speech act which is prohibiting. Conclusion Based on the results and discussions above, the researchers concluded that speech acts have an important role for communication in society. Additionally, there IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 443 were seven types of directive speech act revealed in “XO, Kitty” Television series. The types of directive speech act revealed were commanding, requesting, asking, permitting, advising, inviting, and prohibiting. Additionally, the total of data found was 14 utterances. Next, the 14 data found consisted of 2 data of commanding, 2 data of requesting, 4 data of asking, 1 data of permitting, 2 data of advising, 2 data of inviting, and 1 data of prohibiting. As the result, the most dominant type of directive speech act found in the research was asking, and the least found was permitting and prohibiting. The researchers suggested future researchers to find and analyze type of directive speech act from other data sources such as movie, web-series, novel, news, or interviews script to study the directive speech act in fiction and real life. The researchers also suggested future researchers to apply other theories of directive speech act to investigate more about directive speech act. Also, the researchers suggested to future researchers and readers to apply directive speech act in society. Finally, the researchers realized this research was not perfect. For that reason, the researchers would appreciate any suggestion and input related to this study. Kristin Enjelina Sidabutar, Mhd. Johan An Analysis of Directive Speech Acts in “XO, Kitty” Television Series 444 References Amanda, V., & Marlina, L. (2018). Directive Speech Acts Used in Frozen Movie Transcript. E-Journal of English Language and Literature, 7(1). http://ejournal.unp.ac.id/index.php/jell Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design. SAGE Publications, Inc. Fitria, T. N. (2019). An Analysis of Directive Speech Act Found in ‘Koi Mil Gaya’ Movie. In Journal of Pragmatics Research (Vol. 01, Issue 02). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18326/jopr.v1i2.89-99 Fitriyah. (2022). Directive Speech Act in Louisa May Alcott’s Novel Little Men. Journal of Language, 4(1), 15–24. Kumala, Z. E. I., & Rohmah, Z. (2021). 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