Speech act and Maxim (Tindak ujar dan Maksim)

   Austin  distinguish three things in every speech act:
Locution is what is said, utterance
Ilocution is what the speaker intends to communicate to the addressee
Perlocution is the message that the addresee gets, his interpretation of what the speaker says

• Aspek –aspek situasi Ujaran

Yang menyapa (penyapa atau penutur) dan yang disapa (pesapa atau petutur)
Konteks sebuah tuturan: aspek yg berhub ddengan lingkungan fisik dan sosial sebuah tuturan atau suatu pengetahuan latar belakangyang sama yang dimiliki oleh penutur dan petutur/mitra tutur

• Tujuan tuturan

Tuturan sebagai suatu tindakan atau kegiatan:tindak ujar
Tuturan sebagai produk tindak verbal

• Speech Act (Tindak Ujar)

Assertive Utterances: The speakers or the writer use language to tell what they know or believe, assertive language is concerned with the facts and the purpose  to inform.
Assertive Utterances divided into two part; Indirect and direct uterances
Example Indirect: More plastics are made from soy beans, Direct (usually started with I or we and assertive verb) We declare that the most plastics are made from soy beans

• Assertive verb

1. Focus on information : announce, declare, disclose, explain, express, indicate, mention, proclaim, relate, report
2. Focus on truth-value of utterance: affirm, allege, assert, certify, concede, guarantee, swear, attest, bet, claim, contend, maintain
3. Focus on the speaker’s or involvement in what is reported: confide, deny, profess, and protest
4. Focus on manner of communicating: emphasize, hint, imply, intimate, stress
5. Focus on the nature of message: dictate, narrate, preach
6. Focus on aspect: predict, recall

• Performative utterances

 Performative utterance are valid if spoken by someone whose right to make them is accepted and in circumstances which are accepted as appropriate. Naturally, the limitatation on what can be a performative utterance; The subject of sentence must be I or we, The verb must be in the present tense, Most important the speaker must be recognized as having the authority to make the statement and the circumstances must be appropriate.

A performative utterances is neither true nor false but  its purpose is to make a part of the world conform to what is said. The verbs include bet, declare, baptize, name, nominate, and pronounce

• Verdictive utterances

1. Verdictive utterances are speech act in which the speaker makes an assessment or judgment about the acts of another usually addressee.
2. The action  is viewed positively: commend ….for, compliment…on, congratulate… for, honor… for, praise…for
3. The action is beneficial to the speaker: thank for…, grateful to…for
4. The action is viewed negatively: accuse…of, blame…for, admonish…for, criticize…for, scold…for, charge… with

• Expressive Utterances

Expressive utterances spring from the previous action-or failure to act-of the speaker, or perhaps the present result of those action or failures. Expressive are thus retrospective and speaker involved. The most common express verbs are acknowledge, admit, confess, deny, apologize

• Directive utterances

Directive utterance are those in which the speaker tries to get the addressee to perform some act or refrain from performing  an act. Directive utterance Is prospective; one cannot tell to other people to do something in the past. Three Kinds of directive utterance:

1. Command is effective if only the speaker has some degree of control over the action of the addressee
2. A request is an expression of what the speaker wants to do or refrain from doing.
3. Suggestion is utterances we make to other people to give our opinions as to what they should or should not do

• Commissive Utterances

Speech act that commit a speaker to a course of action are called commissive utterances. These include promises, pledges, threats, and vows. Commissive verbs are illustrated by agree, ask, offer, refuse, swear, all following infinitives. They are prospective and concerbed with the speaker’s communication to future action.

• Phatic Utterances

Example: I’m glad to meet you or so nice to see you again , are necessarily expressions of deep feeling on the part of the speaker. The purpose of utterances like these, phatic utterances is to establish rapport between members of the same society. Phatic language has obvious function than six types discussed above but it is not less important. Phatic utterances include greetings, farewells, polite formulas.

• Maxim (maksim)

According to grice (1978) divided into four part
Maxim of quantity requires the speaker to give as much information as the addressee need but no more
Maxim relevance requires us as speaker, to make our utterances relative to the discourse going on and the context in which they occur
Maxim manner is to be orderly and clear and to avoid ambiguity
Maxim of quality is to say only what one believe to be true.

TEACHING SPEAKING

Speaking proficiency is one kind of language proficiency to be achieved in the teaching of modern languages ​​including English. Talking is the primary vehicle for fostering mutual understanding, mutual communication, using language as a medium.

Speak in the language classroom activities have aspects of two-way communication, ie, between the speaker and the listener on a reciprocal basis. Thus exercises should first talk based on: (1) the ability to listen, (2) the ability to say, and (3) mastery (relative) vocabulary and phrases that enable students to communicate the intent or his thoughts.

Therefore, it can be said that the practice of this speaking is a continuation of a listening exercise activities are also contained in the said exercise. Target to be achieved in this case is the ability and verbal fluency or oral talk (communicate) directly as a primary function of language, particularly English. Because the principle is to Teach in Teaching Speaking The Language, Do not Teach Only About The Language.

            The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation. To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, instructors can use a balanced activities approach that combines language input, structured output, and communicative output. Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening activities, reading passages, and the language heard and read outside of class. It gives learners the material they need to begin producing language themselves.

            In the presentation part of a lesson, an instructor combines content-oriented and form-oriented input. The amount of input that is actually provided in the target language depends on students' listening proficiency and also on the situation. For students at lower levels, or in situations where a quick explanation on a grammar topic is needed, an explanation in English may be more appropriate than one in the target language.

            Students often think that the ability to speak a language is the product of language learning, but speaking is also a crucial part of the language learning process. Effective instructors teach students speaking strategies -- using minimal responses, recognizing scripts, and using language to talk about language -- that they can use to help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and their confidence in using it. These instructors help students learn to speak so that the students can use speaking to learn.

            Language learners who lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking. One way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help them build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges. Such responses can be especially useful for beginners. Minimal responses are predictable, often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate understanding, agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker is saying. Having a stock of such responses enables a learner to focus on what the other participant is saying, without having to simultaneously plan a response.

            Some communication situations are associated with a predictable set of spoken exchanges a script. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns or scripts. So do the transactional exchanges involved in activities such as obtaining information and making a purchase. In these scripts, the relationship between a speaker's turn and the one that follows it can often be anticipated. instructors can help students develop speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts for different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what they will need to say in response. Through interactive activities, instructors can give students practice in managing and varying the language that different scripts contain

            Language learners are often too embarrassed or shy to say anything when they do not understand another speaker or when they realize that a conversation partner has not understood them. Instructors can help students overcome this reticence by assuring them that misunderstanding and the need for clarification can occur in any type of interaction, whatever the participants' language skill levels. Instructors can also give students strategies and phrases to use for clarification and comprehension check.  by encouraging students to use clarification phrases in class when misunderstanding occurs, and by responding positively when they do, instructors can create an authentic practice environment within the classroom itself. As they develop control of various clarification strategies, students will gain confidence in their ability to manage the various communication situations that they may encounter outside the classroom.

            Traditional classroom speaking practice often takes the form of drills in which one person asks a question and another gives an answer. The question and the answer are structured and predictable, and often there is only one correct, predetermined answer. The purpose of asking and answering the question is to demonstrate the ability to ask and answer the question. in contrast, the purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, obtaining information, or expressing an opinion. In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say. Authentic communication involves an information gap; each participant has information that the other does not have. In addition, to achieve their purpose, participants may have to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own understanding.

            To create classroom speaking activities that will develop communicative competence, instructors need to incorporate a purpose and an information gap and allow for multiple forms of expression. However, quantity alone will not necessarily produce competent speakers. Instructors need to combine structured output activities, which allow for error correction and increased accuracy, with communicative output activities that give students opportunities to practice language use more freely.

            Speaking skills to be mastered by the students because these skills are directly related to the entire student learning. Student success in following the process of teaching and learning in schools is largely determined by the mastery of their speech. Students who are unable to speak properly will have difficulty in following the learning activities for all subjects. Any talk of learning to speak learning methods have advantages and disadvantages of each. One method that will complement the other methods. Teachers can choose one or combine various methods in accordance with the conditions of students and availability of other means of support. In addition, teachers can also create a new model in the implementation of learning to speak. Language experience approach is one method that can be used by teachers to improve fluency in speaking because of the language experience approach, the materials developed by teachers with students face to face. In the normal development of materials that can be developed all language skills: listening, or listening, speaking, reading, and writing. With all the skills in an activity that required teachers to be more creative.­­

References

http://www.nclrc.org, acces on 27^th June, 2012.