Speech Act Analysis in the movie The

Beauty and the Beast

Name: Batrisyia Roid binti Mazlan

(TQA170041)
Farida Mukem
(TQA170043)
Due Date:
28th May 2017
Lecturer’s Name: Dr. Jariah binti Mohd Jan
 Introduction

Language is the core representation that helps to translate some word that people have in their mind

into a sentence of spoken works (Yule, 1996). Talking about communication, everyone needs

a hearer to understand and respond what they talk about. Speakers usually communicate in

the same context of language so that the message can we delivered easily. Nevertheless, there

are some communication cases where speakers could not get their messages across due to

different cultural background. There are some ways that can help to prevent such

misunderstanding to happen, by grasping pragmatics. Pragmatics deals with meaning based

on its social context. In pragmatics, there are many aspects and one of them is speech acts.

Speech acts consist of several categories and one of them is directive speech acts.

Pragmatics is the utterances of specific events and the intention of the speaker to hearer at times and

places involving language (Stanford Encyclopedia, 2006). There are several aspects of

pragmatics which include context, deictic, presupposition, implicature and speech acts.

Speech acts is the main point of pragmatics. In communication we use utterances in acting,

which is called speech acts. Speech acts themselves can be divided into three elements; (i)

locutionary (ii) illocutionary (iii) perlocutionary.

Today, language is widely used in movies since it contains various language that puts different

meaning to the real world. When we watch movie, we can’t not only get entertained, but we

can also learn about other aspects such as education, moral and other important values of the

world. Movie is one of a tool that reflects the social life of human being.

According to Yule (1996), there are five types of categories of speech acts namely

declarative, directive, commissive, representative and expressive. Due to limited time and

space, this study will look at directive speech acts and the source of data collection will be

taken from the movie entitled The Beauty and The Beast. This movie is quite interesting as it

contains many dialogues which are good source for data analysis of this study, especially
 from the angle of speech acts. Apart from that, two protagonist of this movie show significant

characteristics which is very interesting to be analysed. This movie also has good moral value

about the importance of communication between two people. Communication is always

closely related to the utterance in every conversation. The conversation in the movie can be a

good instant of speech acts as it represent the complex case of speech act in order to find out

what the characters do by saying something.

The communication act or verbal communication is usually represented by the utterances of the

speakers. In order for them to express their thoughts, they usually do not produce sentences

containing grammatical structure and words, but they also perform action through those

sentences. From this, we could see that every word or phrase uttered by human perform

different implicit action or meaning in it and if the hearer fails to get the intention of the

utterance, this may lead to misunderstanding.

From the movie itself, there are two main characters, which are Belle and The Prince. Both of these

characters have their own unique way of expressing their thoughts. Belle is a girl who likes to

express her thoughts directly, while The Prince has hidden message in his utterances. In

speech acts, hidden message is normally occurred in daily conversation. So, this study will

investigate the types of directive speech acts performed by these two main characters in the

movie and look at the importance of the types of directive speech acts.
 Methodology

The method that will be used in this study is qualitative method. The researcher has calculated the

frequency of directive speech acts used in the movie. Based on the findings gathered, it is

then used for qualitative purpose. The qualitative research related with synthesize the

information and describe the findings clearly. According to Ary (2010), the major

characteristics of qualitative research is something that is concerned with context and

meaning, natural setting, human instrument, descriptive data, emergent design and inductive

analysis.

This study uses Austin’s Speech Acts Theory as the main framework to conduct this research.

According to Austin (1691) pragmatic is described as meaning in context: e.g. the

relationship between what we say, what we mean, and what we understand according to a

particular context or situation. A speech act analysis is an utterance which has both a literal

meaning and a particular illocutionary force (Paltridge, 2000:16) these ideas lay at the heart

of speech act theory.

Two types of data source are used in this research, which are primary as well as secondary data. This

study uses “The Beauty and the beast” movie script by Bill Condon which was produced by

Walt Disney Pictures in 2017 as the main source of data which will be analysed by researcher

through speech act analysis. As for the secondary source, selected journals and book that are

related to speech act are used to carry on with this analysis.

The researcher uses these steps for collecting the data;

1) Buy original DVD of the movie “The Beauty and the Beast”

2) Watching the Disney animation movie “The Beauty and the Beast”, trying to understand it

thoroughly, finding any important details that supported this research and then looking for all

of utterances.

3) Reading and observing dialog from movie script.

4) Selecting the types and the patterns of speech act which are found on conversation in

“The Beauty and the Beast” movie based on the theory from Austin (1961)

5) Calculate directive speech acts found in the movie for the first 10 dialogues between the

main characters which are Belle and The Prince.

6) Construct critical analysis to find out the significance of using directive speech acts in the

movie.

Findings

This section illustrates the finding of the research from collecting data. There are various

categories of direct speech acts in Beauty and the Beast of real-action version. The utterances

will be tabulated into categories.

1. Begging

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 Belle The Prince Please, just tell me know one more thing about her

The utterances above comprise begging purpose of directive speech acts namely the hearer

was begged to do or not to do something.

2. Urging
 No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 Belle The Prince Punish me, not him

The utterances above comprise challenging purpose of directive speech acts because the

hearer was challenged of something.

3. Asking

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 Belle The Prince - Come into the light

2 The Prince Belle - Choose

The utterances above comprise asking purpose of direct speech acts namely the hearer was

asked speakers asked the questions.

4. Demanding

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 The Prince Belle Yes, but you must promise to stay here forever   

The utterance above comprises demanding purpose of direct speech act namely the speaker

shows the demand to the hearer.

5. Instructing

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 The Prince Belle No, I want you to leave this place

2 The Prince Belle No time to explain, you must go  

The utterances above comprise instructing purpose of direct speech act namely the hearer was

instructed to do something.

6. Ordering

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 The Prince Belle I told you to come down for dinner

2 Belle The Prince Punish me, not him.

The utterances above comprise ordering purpose of direct speech act namely the speaker

gives an order to the hearer.

7. Recommending

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 Belle The Prince Wait, take me instead

The utterances above comprise recommending purpose of direct speech act namely the hearer

was recommended from the speaker to do something.

8. Requesting

No Speaker Hearer Dialogue

1 Belle The Prince Please, attempt to be gentle man  

The utterances above comprise requesting purpose of direct speech act namely the hearer was

requested from the speaker to do something.

 The directive speech act has the significant role keeping the flow of the story smoothly. The

analysis of direct speech act is based on the gesture and body movement of the hearer who do

the reaction. The direct speech act above shows the speaker intention to the hearer reaction.

Conclusion

The analysis and discussion lead to the following conclusions. “The Beauty and the Beast” movie

contains many interesting and memorable dialogues that can be categorized as the directive

speech acts. The conversations in the movie attract us from the way of speaking, acting and

body movement. It also happens in “The Beauty and the Beast”, the plots and live action help

viewers to focus on what the characters are doing. Based on the data analysis, it can be

concluded that directive speech acts are essential actions in social interactions, they are also

applied in the movie. Directive speech acts cannot be separated from daily social interactions;

therefore, Walt Disney uses them in their movie to show that the movie represents the social

interaction of human life. Based on the data analysis, the directive speech acts are frequently

performed in the movie. It can be seen from the analysis in the previous section that

elaborates the use of the directive speech acts. By watching this movie, the viewer will learn

about words, action and utterances. The viewer can learn about pragmatics, especially speech

acts by observing the dialogues and their context in every scene of the movie. The viewer can

see the importance of directive speech acts in keeping the smooth flow of the story lines of

the movie. The viewer can also learn grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary from what

they see and hear. They can imitate the action that the characters performing in the movie.
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