THESIS PROPOSAL

RECOGNITION AND REALIZATION OF PROMISING SPEECH

ACT BY STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
OF STATE UNIVERSITY OF SEMARANG

AHMAD MUBAIS

0203515099

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION

GRADUATE PROGRAM
STATE UNIVERSITY OF SEMARANG
2016

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 APPROVAL

This thesis proposal entitled RECOGNITION AND REALIZATION OF

PROMISING SPEECH ACT BY STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
OF STATE UNIVERSITY OF SEMARANG has been approved by the advisers of
the English Language Education, (Post Graduate Program), State
University of Semarang on DD/MM/2016

First Adviser Second Adviser

Prof.Dr Warsono, MA Drs. Ahmad Sofwan, MA.,

Ph.D
NIP._ NIP. 196204271989011001

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 THESIS PROPOSAL

RECOGNITION AND REALIZATION OF PROMISING SPEECH

ACT BY STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE OF
STATE UNIVERSITY OF SEMARANG

1. INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the introduction which covers the background
of the topic, reasons for choosing the topic, research problems; objectives
of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study and the
definitions of key terminologies.

1.1 Background of the Topic

Language is a way that is used as a communication device among human.

Language uses systematic patterns in many forms and changes time to time. The forms of
languages evolve to what are now called spoken and written language. Language is a system
of arbitrary conventionalized vocal, written or gestural symbols that enable members of a
given community to communicate intelligibly with one another (Brown, 2000:5). In order to
be able to understand each other in communication, people must understand the language
itself that is integrated on four skills of language, speaking, listening, reading and writing.
The crucial need to be able to understand each other in a worldwide scale is what brings
people to accept English as the International Language.
English is a foreign language to Indonesian. It is importance since English is most
commonly used in the world. In order to be able to communicate well in English, one must
know how to pronounce correctly, how to form the sentences from the words, and how to use
the language properly not only deal with the grammar but also to apply in social life in
different context of situation. Indeed, we use English as a language that commonly used as a
mean of communication in the world of multicultural life.
Communication, according to Cambridge Advance Learners Dictionary (1993), is
defined as the various methods of sending information between people and places.
Communication itself can be done one-way such as in television, radio and newspaper. And
two ways just like what people do in daily conversation both spoken and written. In

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communicating with people, communicative competence ability is crucial issue to everyone.
Ellis (1994, 13) stated that communicative competence includes knowledge the speaker-
hearer has of what constitutes appropriate as well as correct language behavior in relation to
particular communicative goals. In a case of asking questions, for example, the speaker must
know how to compose a question correctly and to whom the question is directed. Asking a
question to a senior lecturer in a classroom requires different strategy from asking a question
to the stranger we meet on the street. The same case happens not only in asking a question,
but also in answering a question, inviting someone, making a request and offering something,
and many others.
One of the linguistics subfield of pragmatic regarding with communicative
competence is speech act. It was firstly introduced by Austin (1962) to oppose the issue
which was said by logical positivists that unless a sentence can be verifie to be true or false, it
is meaningless. Austin claims that not all utterances can be said to be either true or false.
According to Celce-Murcia, et al. (1995) the communicative competence
covers discourse competence, linguistic competence, pragmatic
competence, socio cultural competence and lastly actional competence.
As a means to investigate pragmatics, the speech act approach has been
used effectively for both in first and second language acquisition research.
According to speech act theory, (Searle: 1969), speakers perform
illocutionary acts by producing utterances. Through their utterances
speakers convey communicative intentions, for examples requests,
apologies, promises, advices, compliments, offers, refusals, complaints
and thanking. The study of speech acts provides a useful means of
relating linguistic form and communicative intent. An utterance, here, is
treated as the realization of a speakers intention and purpose in a
particular context.
The word speech literary means the activity of talking, while the word act refers to an
activity of doing something for a particular purpose. According to Mey (1993), speech acts
are actions happening in the world which bring about a change in the existing state of affairs.
Mey basically defines speech act as utterance that can be seen as an action that has its own
effect based on its intention and purpose. Whereas Richards, Platt, and Weber (1985) define
speech act as an utterance of a functional unit of communication. From the definition above,
it is conclude that speech act happens as a speaker communicates with others in the form of

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utterances that, by Mey says, change the existing state of affairs between speakers and the
hearers. Kinds of speech acts include promise, request, apology, invitation, refusal,
agreement, and disagrement which can be performed when a speaker makes an utterance.
Promise as one of speech acts deal with something that may happen in the future and
commitment of the speaker. Mey (1993), quoting Searle says that a promise should not be
about things that are going to happen, or should happen anyway. This clear things up that
someone cannot promise that the sun will rise tomorrow because it does not deal with
commitment of the speaker, or in this case we call the speaker as promiser.
As a noun, promise is defined as a declaration or assurance that one will do a
particular thing or that a particular thing will happen. As a verb, promise is defined as an act
to assure someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or
declare that something will happen. In western culture, saying things like Ill come to the
meeting is understood as a promise. Acording to Egner (2002), promising is committing
oneself to do something. When someone expresses a promise, he/she makes a commitment
related to the future. The future commitment can be something the promiser does or
something that will eventually be done in the future. Thus, the way in expressing a promise
determines the outcome of the promise itself.
In Pragmatics, according to Austin (1962), promise belongs to performative act
which cannot be judged as true or false; they would rather be considered as felicitous or
infelicitous. Performative act of promise is under the speech act theory which is defined by
Lyon (1977) as an act performed in saying something.
In daily life, some people are very casual in making promises. Sometimes, promises
are made with no intention of keeping them. For example, when people say Ill call you later,
and Ill be there in ten minutes, they make promises. However, often those promises are not
kept.
How could promises are made without intention to keep them? It is due to the fact that
not all promises are felicitous. In making promises, some people may be felicitous that they
intend to keep the promises, but some others may not. There are some felicity conditions to
determine whether a certain promise is felicitous or infelicitous. Based on these conditions,
we are able to discover whether a promise is made as a merely lip service or a real felicitous
promise.
Based on the phenomena, the writer is interested in conducting a research dealing with
promising utterances. The focus of this study is the utterances analyses of promising speech

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act expressed by the students of English as foreign language of State University of Semarang
that will be analyzed.

1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic

The reasons of analyzing the speech act of promising used by English foreign
language learners of State University of Semarang is that Saedi et al (2014) states that
research and study on speech acts in different languages and context would help to cope the
gap among the speakers of different native languages. Speech acts researches could help to
inform and alert speakers of potential pragmatic mistakes that may arise in social pedagogical
domain.
Second, to promise is to tell someone that you will do something for them. It is one of
the kinds of speech acts that demands a commitment regarding to the future. Promising
something is not predicting the future, but making an effort to make a certain thing happen in
the future based on the promise itself. Promise is actually something that people do everyday,
yet sometimes they are often ignorant of the way it is formed, done, and realized. Thus, it is
important to learn how to apply promising strategies in order to be able to have a good
communication with other to make utterances of promising, especially students of English as
foreign language of State University of Semarang.
Third, Learners awareness in studying English as their specific major study leads
them to encourage producing appropriate spoken or written language deal with promising
speech act. Thus, they are may still have the problems to produce sentence or utterances of
how to realize a speech act promising as a commitment in English. Here, a commitment is a
quite wide-ranging phenomenon and the narrower act of promising should be seen in this
broader context (Raymond Hickey: 1986). Furthermore, it is important to learners of state
university of semarang to realize promising of speech act as a commitment correctly based on
the felicitous and infelicitous conditions.

1.3 Research Problems

The research problems of this study are as follows:
1. How do students of English as foreign language of State University of Semarang
recognize promising speech act?
2. How do students of English as foreign language of State University of Semarang
realize promising speech act?

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 3. What are the strategies of promising that are used by students of English as foreign
language of State University of Semarang?
4. What are the factors influence the promising strategies used by students of English as
foreign language of State University of Semarang?
1.4 Objectives of the Study
Based on the research problems, the research objectives are as follows:
1. To describe how students of English as foreign Language of State
University of Semarang recognize promising speech act.
2. To describe how students of English as foreign language of State University of
Semarang realize promising speech act.
3. To identify the strategies of promising used by students of English as
foreign language of State University of Semarang
4. To identify the factors influence the strategies of promising used by
students of State University of Semarang.

1.5 Significances of the Study

The writer hopes that this research would give some advantages:
1. Theoretically, the research is expected to enrich the previous theories of speech act
of promising since this research will give description of how English Department
students produce promises.
2. Practically, it is hoped that the research will give contributions to students who study
English and English teachers or researchers to develop further research related to
speech act of promising strategies.
3. Pedagogically, it is also hoped that the research can be used as supplementary
information for both EFL teachers and learners related to speech act of promising
strategies. Hopefully, this study can be used by teachers to interpret and criticize the
lesson of the promise expressions appropriately.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The scope of this study is promising strategies in speech act theory. The study is
limited on the expressions of promising speech act, the strategies of promising speech act as
well as the factors which influence the usage of promising speech act strategies by EFL
Learners of State University of Semarang.
1.7 Definition of Key Terms
The following definitions of key terms that are used in this research are as
follows:

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 Speech Act: a theory which analyzes the role of utterances in
relation to the behavior of speaker and hearer in interpersonal
communication (Austin, 1962)
Promise: A commissive speech act which commits the speaker to
some future course of action (Levinson, 1983)
Realization: the strategies used in performing the speech act
(Afghari, 1007: 117)
Student of English as Foreign Language: an EFL classroom is in a
country where English is not the dominant language. Students share
the same language and culture. The teacher may be the only native
English speaker they have exposure to. Outside of the classroom
students have very few opportunities to use English. (Agarwal,
et.al., 2011).

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Reviews of Previous Studies

In order to make this study good, valid and different form another research in the
same topic, the writer takes some previous researches to encourage this study. The reviews of
previous studies are those that were held to support this study.
Saeidi et al (2014) conducted a research on speech act of promising. The research
compared speech act of promising produced and recognized by native speakers and Iranian
EFL learners. The research was based on communicative competence gap among speakers.
The study was aimed to investigate the strategies used in expressing promises in different
situations. The data were not only expression of promising in English but also promising
expressions in Farsi, the Iranian language. An open-ended data collection technique was
employed for studying participants responses and verbal reactions to different situations. The
result suggested that the two groups vary in using strategies and types of promising. It was
found that Iranian EFL learners sensitivity to their first language made them use
inappropriate expressions and strategies in their English responses.
As Saeidi et als research, this current research also focuses on the speech act of
promising produced by EFL learners. Both researchs describe the promises strategies used by
the research subjects. However, Saeidi et als differs from this current research in term of the

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research subjects. The subjects of Saeidi et als were both English native speakers and Iranian
EFL learners. Moreover, Saeidi et als does not take into account the factors which influence
the promising strategies.
Another research of speech act was done by Tun Nur Afizah Zainal Ariff and Ahmad
Ibrahim Mugableh in 2013. The focus of the study is on the pragmatic analysis of the speech
act of promising in Jordanian Arabic. The data collection method used questionnaire
consisting of 17 hypothetical situations that express imitations of real life situation in Jordan.
The research object was 140 Jordanians. The analysis reveals that Jordanians used some
strategies when issuing their promises: discourse conditionals, tautological-like expressions,
body-part expressions, self-aggrandizing expressions, time expressions, courtesy-like
expressions, swearing in Jordanian Arabic that are utilized by Jordanians to forge promises
with reference to expressions, adjacency pairs and false promises. Moreover, the analysis of
this article have shown that there is a gender difference in the use of linguistic forms in the
speech act of promising among Jordanian, i.e., use of body-expressions among women once
they issue their promises.
There are some similarities and differences between Ariff & Mugablehs research and
this currect research. The similarities lay on the research focus e.i., speech act of promising
and promising strategies. On the other hand, the disimilarities lay on the usage of English and
Jordanian Arabic. Ariff & Mugablehs research analyzed promises in Jordanian Arabic
whereas this currect research would describe the promises in English by English Department
Students. Ariff & Mugablehs research may seem irrelevant due to the different languages.
However, the research give precious references on promising strategies.
Another research, Egner (2012) studied and compared the speech act of promising
used by African and Western. Based on his study, he found that the Africans promises differs
from the Westerns in terms of negotiation of the felicity conditions. For example, for an
African speaker, just stating an intention to perform an act in the hearers favor does not yet
imply commitment or even presuppose ability to carry out the act. In fact, statements of this
kind are generally to be interpreted as polite promise; i.e., ways to satisfy cultural
expectations and save face. Intercultural misunderstandings in relation to this type of
statement of intention arise if satisfaction of all the felicity conditions for the act of a
classical promise is assumed to be fulfilled each time such a statement is made. While, for
Westerner, they want to be sure s/he will be able to do what s/he promises before promising
something. S/he may well desire to do something that s/he knows the hearer would prefer

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her/him to do., but unless s/he has reasonable evidence for the fact that s/he is also able to do
it, s/he will not make a promise to do it. S/he will rather say something like Sorry, Id like to
do X, but Im afraid I cant.
In this current research the writer focus on the recognition of promises, realization of
promises, strategies of promise and the factors that give the effect of promise strategies that
are made by EFL Learners of State University of Semarang. It is different from Egners
research but the same topic of promising speech act. The writer found precious reference on
Egners research on locating the cultural misunderstanding of African that affected the
strategy of promising speech act. It may happen to EFL Learners of State University of
Semarang, while this current research also focus on the factors may affect the strategy of
promising speech act.
Research conducted by Bernicot and Laval (2004) on children about promising
speech act. Their study has two objectives. The first was to gain an accurate understanding of
the role of the preparatory condition in the comprehension of promises. The second
objectives was to test linguistic forms which do not contain the verb promise but which,
according to the speech acts classification (Searle and Vandeveken, 1985; Vanderveken
1990a; 1990b) are specifically commissive, i.e., they contain verbs in the future tense (active
or passive voice). This current research differs from Benicot and Lavals research in term of
the subject research. The subject of the previous study is children, and the current research is
EFL Learners of State University of Semarang.
Laval and Bernicot (1999) also conducted much of comprehension of promise by
children. The result of this study revealed that 3 and 6 years olds based their interpretation of
the promises primarily on the contextual of the communication situation, after the age of 6
years, the children began to rely on temporal markers in the utterances whenever the
immediate future tense was used and promise specific contextual information was lacking
and the nine years olds always based their interpretation of the promises on temporal cues in
the utterance.
Suwigno (2011) studied the interlanguage pragmatics of agreement strategies by non-
native speakers. The research took two groups of Indonesian respondents who are college
students in the second sixth semester who were given questionnaire in the form of DCT. It
showed that disagreement is realized through contradiction, counterclaim, irrelevancy claim,
contradiction and counterclaim, and challenges to personal/non-personal issues in different
social status. Even though, both Suwignos research and this current research are used DCT,

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the bias is avoided in this current research by using two methods of collecting the data. Those
methods are the role play and DCT.
In the literature, little research has been done on childrens concepts of a promise and
promising. Chomsky (1959) found that 5-year-old children were capable of using the
performative verb promise properly in a sentence. Yet while they had acquired the concept
of promising to finish doing what they were asked to do, they could not accurately define the
word promise before the age of nine (Mant & Perner 1988). It is clear that childrens
pragmatic and metapragmatic concepts of promising evolve with age (Astington 1988a,
Bernicot & Laval 1996, Liu & Fang 2003), yet the nature of this evolution remains intriguing.
Astington (1988a) set out to examine whether childrens mental concepts of a
promise would be affected by the performative verb. In her study, she designed six stories
in which one of the speakers said I promise, and had the subjects judge which speech acts
were promises. Only in two stories was there a promise of a future action, while the other
cases were predictions or assertions. Each story had three possible outcomes: promise
fulfilled, promise unfulfilled, and outcome unknown. 170 subjects were involved in this
study: 116 were children aged 5 to 13, and the other 54 were college students who served as
the Adult Group. The results showed that the 5-year-olds failed to distinguish a promise from
a predication or an assertion, and that the children aged between 7 and 9 often incorrectly
took an unfulfilled promise as not a promise. However, the 7-to-9-year-olds were aware
that promisers should be responsible for their intentionally broken promises, a result in
accordance with Searles essential condition that a promise contains the promisers obligation
to finish a future action (Searle 1969). The adults responses were all consistent with Searles
(1969) definition of the speech act of promising. Most adults could make the correct
judgment regarding what the speaker had promised, even if the promise was unfulfilled.
Maas & Abbeduto (2001) adopted Astingtons (1988a) framework in her study of
childrens understanding of promises, but their research focused instead on broken promises.
Thirty-two children and a group of native English-speaking adults were asked to participate
in their study. The results showed a clear line of development from the 7-year-olds to the 9-
year-olds and then to adults. They found that the 7-year-olds failed to recognize an unfulfilled
promise as a promise, as they still incorrectly considered the outcome to be the most essential
part of a promise. Thus once the outcome of the promise was not accomplished, they would
consider the promise to not be a promise. Their results confirmed Astingtons findings that
children found it hard to recognize an unfulfilled promise as being in fact a promise. In

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addition, the young children often varied their judgment according to the cause of the broken
promise. The 9-year-olds did not recognize an unfulfilled promise as an effective promise if
the promiser had no reason for failing to accomplish the obligation of the promise.
Furthermore, the 7-year-olds had a weak understanding of Searles sincerity condition. They
thought an insincere promise was not an effective one; that is, they believed the promisers
intention was important.
Maas (2008) examined childrens understanding of Searles sincerity condition for the
speech act of promising. In her study, 4-year-old and 6-year-old childrens understanding of
the role of the promisers intention in promises was examined. The results showed that the 6-
year-olds had an incomplete understanding of the sincerity condition and the 4-year-olds only
referred their judgments to the outcome. Maass research dealt with younger subjects aged
between 3 and 6 with regard to their understanding of the idea of a false belief. Although
there is an obvious gap between the ages at which children begin to understand the idea of a
false belief and that at which they acquire the speech act of promising, Maass results showed
that the sincerity of the promiser affects childrens judgment of a promise. In addition to the
sincerity of the promisers commitment, Maas found that the children aged 4 and 6 were
more likely to judge an utterance as a promise when they were making judgments from their
own perspective rather than from the listeners perspective.
Based on Austins (1962) speech act theory, Wang (2009) examined Searles (1969)
preparatory condition and sincerity conditions of promising with Chinese children. Two
hundred and ten native-Mandarin-speaking Chinese children were assigned to each of three
age groups, made up of 3-, 6-, and 9-year-olds. Moreover, the 630 subjects were further
divided into eighteen subgroups of thirty-five subjects. The subjects were requested to make
judgments and justifications. The results showed that childrens understanding of promising
evolved with age; the earliest age at which they acquired the concept of promising was nine,
while at the age of three they could take the promisees desire into consideration and predict
the outcome. Thus a promissees perspective on a promise was found to be a possible factor
affecting childrens understanding of a particular promise. Moreover, it was found that the
linguistic form of a statement (promise-to-act, future-action, and predicative assertion) had no
influence on young childrens understanding of the speech act of promising.
The study conducted by Hickey (1986) about promising speech act of commitment in
English. He analyzed the nature of verbal commitment, the form it takes as a speech act and
the specific manifestation of it in English. He also analyzed the felicity conditions under

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which these acts can be useful; and the relation of speech acts as commitment to other types
of speech acts. Hickeys focus is on the commitment and felicity condition. While this current
research focuses on recognition and realization of promises, strategies of promise and then
the factors that give the effect of promise strategies that are made by EFL Learners of State
University of Semarang.
Schauer & Adolphs (2006) explored the similarities and the differences between a
discourse completion tasks (DCT), corpus data and discusses potential implications for using
the two in pedagogic context. They did the study by contrasting native speakers expressions
of gratitude elicited by DCT with those found in a five million word corpus of spoken
English. They also examined the advantages and disadvantages of the both data sets with
regard to the language-teaching context. The result suggested that a combined use of both
instruments might aid the teaching of formulaic sequences in the classroom. This particular
study compared the DCT result with corpus data. Meanwhile, in this current research used
both DCT and role play to avoid the bias and a balance result.
Joko Karyono (2015) studied about the promising speech act used by teacher of
Vocational School in Pacitan. He focused on pragmatic analysis of the speech act of
promising used by Pacitan Vocational English teacher that aimed to fulfill the gap of the
dissimilar languages and culture manage with interethnic communication difficulties and the
study concentrated on the analysis of the strategies of promising and what dominant strategy
used by Pacitan Vocational English teachers. The data of his study is documents. The
documents are taken from Vocational English teachers. Consist of 10 males and 15 females
and the level of English proficiency was middle to advance. The data he collected from the
responses of DCT produced by the teachers. He found that the respondents applied
performative and non-performative verb in stating the promises. The dominants promising
strategy used by the teachers is promising non-performative verb strategy. Concerning the
study conducted by Arief and Mugableh (2013), they proposed nine strategies in delivering
promises used by Jordanian. Those strategy namely discourse conditionals, tautological-like
expressions, body-part expressions, self-aggrandizing expressions, courtesy-like expressions,
swearing in Jordanian Arabic that are utilized by Jordanian to forge promises with reference
to expressions, adjacency pairs and false promises. The nine strategies used by Jordanian are
different from Joko Karyonos study found in the data analysis. Joko Karyono stated that
there two strategies found in his study namely performative verb and non-performative verb.
Performative verb is a promise which applied the word promise to express promising

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utterances. In contrast, non-performative verb is a promise which is delivered implicitly
without using the word promise.
There are differences and similarities of Joko Karyonos study with this current study.
While the similarities of the study conducted by Joko Karyono and the current study are the
objects of the research that is promising speech acts and both of the researches also
concentrate on analyzing the promising strategies. The differences are this current study not
only focusing on analyzing the strategies promising speech act but also on to what extent
EFL learners recognize promising speech acts, how do they realize promising speech acts and
the factors that emerge in affecting the strategies they used to realize promises. Moreover, the
subjects of this study are EFL learners of State University of Semarang while Vocational
English Teachers as the subjects of Joko Karyonos study. This study gives valuable reference
about the strategies found different from study conducted by Arief and Mugaleh. Thus, it may
be the new reference of strategies to realize promising speech act.
Pudjilestari (2012) observed promising utterance in some movie manuscript. She
found that there are three kinds of sentence (declarative sentence, imperative sentence and
interrogative sentence); there are five intentions of the speaker (to assure, to command, to
request, to affirm and to describe), and there are eight reasons of the speakers (showing
responsibility, showing angry, showing relationship, showing affection, showing hope,
showing teasing, showing misunderstanding and showing attention). This study can be the
reference regarding with the utterances of promises found in form of sentences to assure the
intention. This study is different to this current research but will enrich the writers
knowledge to conduct the research of promising speech acts.
The other research also conducted by Delaney and Gibbs (2009) about pragmatic
factors in making and understanding promises. The result from this study showed that the
first two of Searles conditions are extremely important to maintain if a promise is to be made
or understood. However, it appears that people can make promises about actions that would
be performed in the normal course of events. As such, these studies support the idea that
promises do not by themselves obligate a speaker, but are used to reaffirm previously existing
and often unstated, obligations. It closely related to the factors affected the strategy that will
be used to realize promising speech acts as the writer will analyze in this current research.
A study conducted by Rahayu (2009) about speech entitled A Socio Pragmatic
analysis of Promising Utterance in Barrack Obama Campaign Speech. The method of this
research is qualitative research. the result of the analysis showed that one form of utterance

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occurred in Barrack Obama speeches that is declarative sentence, the intentions of promising
utterance are giving response, stating purpose, assuring, persuading, describing, inviting,
requesting and the reasons of employing promising utterances are showing attention, regret,
cooperative, responsibility, relationship, mercy, affection, and prestige.
Qadir and Riloff (2011) conducted study about the text genre of message board
forums, which contain a mixture of expository sentences that present factual information and
conversational sentences that include communicative acts between the writer and readers.
Their goal is to create sentence classifiers that can identify whether a sentence contains a
speech act and can recognize sentences containing four different speech act classes:
Commissives, Directives, Expressives and Representatives. They conducted experiment using
a wide variety of features, including lexical and syntactic features, speech act words list from
external resources, and domain-specific semantic class features. They evaluated the results on
a collection of message board posts in the domain of veterinary medicine. This studied focus
on four classes of speech acts while in this current research focus only on promising speech
act that belong to commissive speech act.
A research conducted by Yuliati (2012) about promising utterance in the novel of
Twilight that analyzed translation analyzes. It revealed that the translation variation of
language forms of promising utterances are word translated to word, word translated to
phrase, positive declarative sentence translated to positive declarative sentence, negative
declarative sentence translated to negative declarative sentence, positive declarative sentence
translated to negative declarative sentence. The implicature found are conventional and
conversational implicature and also in the form of equivalent and non-equivalent. The
politeness strategies of directive utterance are Bald on Record, positive politeness, negative
politeness and off-record strategies.
All of the previous studies have the similarity to this current study. The similarity is
that all of the previous studies and this research analyze the promising speech acts utterances.
But there are also differences between each research. Some of the differences of each
research have been explained above. Almost all of the previous studies compared the use
speech act by native speakers of English. Most of all the previous studies also only analyze
realization and strategies of promising speech act. In this current research, the researcher will
examine the recognition, the realization and the strategies of promising speech act and also
the factors that affect the strategies of promising speech act by Students of English as Foreign
Language of State University of Semarang.

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2.2 Reviews of Related Theories
Several theories underlying the study are discussed in this section, such as pragmatics
theory, including the theory of speech act, speech act of promising, felicity condition of
promising speech act and the explanation about the promising strategies.
2.2.1 Pragmatics
There are many definitions about pragmatics from some linguists. Dealing with
Thomas (1995:21) pragmatics is defined as speaker meaning since it puts the focus on the
speaker intention. In other word, it concerns on a speaker as a producer of the message,
which involves the process of interpreting by the hearer. It also sets several level of the
speakers meaning that is called force and utterance meaning.
Yule (1996:9) defines pragmatics as the study of contextual meaning. Pragmatics is
concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or a writer) and
interpreted by a listener (or a reader) so that it involves the interpretation what people mean
in a particular context and how the context influences what is said. When we read or hear
pieces of language, we normally try to understand not only what the words mean, but what
the writer or speaker of those words intended to convey (Yule, 1996:127).
According to Levinson (1983: 9) pragmatics is defined as the study of those relations
between language and context that are grammaticalized or encoded in the structure of a
language. It means that the context and language as a part of pragmatics must be related with
the writing of grammars.
By citing Morris (1938), Levinson (1983) distinguishes branches of inquiry within
semiotics: (1) syntactics (syntax) which studies the formal relation of signs to anothers; (2)
semantics which studies the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable;
and (3) pragmatics which studies the relation of signs to interpreter. Since this currect
research studies on speech act, pragmatics becomes the centre of the focus.
Levinson (1983) stated that pragmatics is the study of language usage. He points out
the distinctions of competence and performance which are proposed by Chomsky. The
distinction says that pragmatics is concerned solely with the principles of language usage.
Kasper (1989) defines pragmatics as the study of acting by means of language, of doing
things with word.
There are four aspects in pragmatics: (1) speaker meaning, (2) contextual meaning,
(3) how more gets communicated than is said, and (4) expression of relative distance.
Speaker meaning deals with pure analysis of what the speakers mean by both the speakers

14
and the listeners while contextual meaning is the analysis of meaning in a particular context
or (borrowing Yules explanation) how the context influences what is said. The third notion
deals with inferences or the ability to read between the lines. It deals a lot with making
conclusion of what people actually intend to say, but does not actually say it. Finally,
expression of relative distance means that an utterance is said depends highly on the physical
and social closeness between the speakers and the listeners. The way people speak to their
friends and to their parents, for example, are different because both relationships have
different social closeness.

2.2.2 Speech Act Theory

The central interest of the discussion of deixis, presupposition, and implicature is the
issue of truth or falsity in an utterance (Levinson:1983). The issue was proposed by logical
positivists who said that unless a sentence can be verifie to be true or false, it is meaningless.
However, Austin claims that not all utterances can be said to be either true or false.

(1) I eat this food

(2) Do you like apple?
(3) I take a bus home
(4) Give me the spoon!
Based on the examples, Austin shows that some utterances such as (1) and (3) can be
considered as true or false. Based on utterance (1), we can say It is not true that you eat this
food and we can say that it is not true that you take a bus home. However, we cannot say
whether utterance (2) and (4) either true or false. Utterance (2) belongs to question whereas
utterance (4) belongs to command. Other utterances which could not be considered as true or
false are exclamations, wishes, etc. It is stated in Austins first observation to oppose the
logical positivism theory.
The second observation of Austin found that utterances using the grammatical form of
declarative are not used to make true or false statements as shown in this following examples
taken from Austin (1962):

(5) I promise to take a taxi home

(6) I name this ship The Albatross

(7) I apologize

15
 The utterances (5), (6), and (7) cannot be said as true or false. We could not say I
apologize is either true or false. No one can deny that the speaker did apologize. It is because
those utterances belong to performative utterances. It is an utterance which cannot be judged
as true or false; it is understood as performing an action. We can only say either performative
utterance is felicitous or infelicitous as parts of felicity conditions (FCs).
Based on these examples, Austin (1962) distinguishes utterances into two general
classes: (1) performative utterance and (2) non-performative utterance (constantive
utterance). The classess are presentented on the following chart:

UTTERANCES

NON-PERFORMATIVES PERFORMATIVES
(CONSTATIVES)

Saying something Doing something through saying it

True False Felicitous Infelicitous

(happy) (unhappy)

Austin (1962) argues that it is not useful to ask whether performative utterances are
true or false, yet they can go wrong or unhappy or infelicitous as what he says in utterance (6)
I name this ship The Albatross. This utterances may and may not true. Thomas (1995)
describes a situation to prove that untterance (6) can go wrong. She says What is I sneak up
on the cruise ship The Queen Elizabeth II at dead night... and re-name it The Albatross?. It
means that performative utterances cannot be true or untrue; it would rather felicitous or
infelicitous.

Austin (1962) and Levinson (1983: 236) proposed three basic sense related to uttering
sentences and its performing action: (1) locutionary, (2) illocutionary, and (3) perlocutionary
acts. A locutionary act is the utterance of a sentence with determinate sense and reference
(Levinson: 1983: 236); the act of producing an utterance. Illocutionary acts are the acts
performed in communicating a verbal expression. On the other hand, the perlocutionary acts

16
are acts carried out by performing an illocutionary or locutionary acts; the act intended as the
result of committing an illocutionary act.
Austin (1962) states that we do not use language to say things, but to do things. This
led to a theory of illocutionary acts, the second classes of three basic senses. Austin adds that
it is a theory of which examines what kinds of things we do when we speak, how we do them,
and how our acts may succeed or fail.
Austin classifies illocutionary acts into five types, i.e., verdictives, exercitives,
commissives, behabitives, and expositives. Although it is often argued that Austins
classification is not complete and those coined categories are not mutually exclusive, Austins
classification is best seen as an attempt to give a general picture of illocutionary acts: what
types of illocutionary act one can generally perform in uttering a sentence. One can exercise
judgment (Verdictive), exert influence or exercise power (Exercitive), assume obligation or
declare intention (Commissive), adopt attitude, or express feeling (Behabitive), and clarify
reasons, argument, or communication (Expositive). The long list of illocutionary verbs in
each class also illustrates how many subtly differentiated illocutionary acts exist in a
language like English. The fact that Austin includes the same word in two different classes
and he does not regard it as a problem suggests that it is not an issue for Austin which classes
a particular illocutionary verb/act actually belongs to. Verdictives consist in the delivering of
a finding, official or unofficial, upon evidence or reason as to value or fact so far as these are
distinguishable. Examples of verbs in this class are; acquit, hold, calculate, describe, analyze,
estimate, date, rank, assess and characterize. Exercitives are the giving of a decision in favor
of or against a certain course of action or advocacy of itand a decision that something is
to be so, as distinct from a judgment that it is so. Some examples are: order, command,
direct, plead, beg, recommend, entreat and advice. Meanwhile, the whole point of a
commissive is to commit the speakers to a certain course of action. Some of the obvious
examples are: promise, vow, pledge, covenant, contract, guarantee, embrace and swear.
Behabitives includes the notion of reaction to other peoples behavior, fortunes and of
attitudes and expressions of attitudes to someone elses past conduct or imminent conduct.
Among the examples Austin listed are: apologize, thank, deplore, commiserate, congratulate,
felicitate, welcome, applaud, criticize, bless, curse, toast and drink. But also, curiously: dare,
defy, protest and challenge. Expositives are used in acts of exposition involving the
expounding of views, the conducting of arguments and the clarifying of usages and reference.

17
Some of the examples given by Austin are affirm, deny, emphasize, illustrate, answer, report,
accept, object to, concede, describe, class, identify and call.
Hence, Searle (1969) categorizes the illocutionary acts into five classes: (1) assertives
which commits the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g., asserting,
concluding, stating, claiming, reporting, announcing, etc.; (2) directives which are attempts
by the speaker to get the addressee to do something, e.g., requesting, commanding, advicing,
etc.; (3) commissives which commit the speakers to some future actions, e.g., promising,
offering, swearing, threatening, etc.; (4) expressives which express a psychological state, e.g.,
thinking, apologizing, congratulating, etc.; and (5) declaratives which affect immediate
changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic
institutions, e.g., resigning, dismissing, accepting, declaring a war, etc.
Mey (1993: 111) stated that speech acts are actions happening in the world, that is,
they bring about a change in the existing state of affairs. In other words, speech act are
utterances that can be seen as actions. Thus, it also has effects and influence in things that are
happening and it is done for a specific purpose.
Griffiths (2006: 148) declared that speech act is the point of talking, typing or writing
to other people. Whereas Richards, Platt and Weber (1985), defined speech act as an
utterance as a functional unit in communication. It means that the unit in which
communication happens has a specific function through words. Kinds of speech act, includes
promise, request, apology, invitation, refusal, agreement and disagreement can be performed
when a speaker makes an utterance.

2.2.3 Speech Act of Promising

Mey (1993) states that speech act of promise and request are favorite discussions.
Both are tied to the element of future. Promise deals with speakers intention and
commitment regarding things that will happen in the future as it belongs to commisive
category of illocutionary act.
Mey also questions whether the word promise is a necessary element in the speech
act of promise. Promise utterances often claimed as a promise. Palmer (1976:166) claims
that there is some overlap between the speech act of promising and warning. He says that a
sentence beginning I promise could be a warning. For example I promise I would come and
punch you on the face. Both promising and warning are about future acts to be accomplished
by the speaker. However, due to the felicity condition 4 which says that promise have to give

18
advantage to the hearer, the utterance does not belong to promise; it does not fulfill felicity
condition.
Wierzbicka (1987:204-13) classifies the following verbs within the promise group:
promise, pledge, vow, swear, vouch for and guarantee. She contends that the above-
mentioned verbs share some features. For example, these verbs denote some future acts to be
accomplished by the speaker for the benefits of the hearer. By contrast, subtle nuances of
meaning exist between the promise group. For example, when someone promise, he is trying
to strengthen the degree of assurance to the hearer, whereas in vowing, the speaker is trying
to obligate himself to do a certain act. This difference between promising and vowing can be
accounted for in the light of assumption that promising is hearer-oriented while vowing is
speaker-oriented. Moreover, vowing includes the use of scared entity for the speaker, whereas
promising does not necessitate such as entity. In the same spirit, vowing is private while
pledging is public because in vowing the speaker asks God as a witness that he will do or not
do something, while in pledging the speaker would like all people to know that he will do a
certain act. To sum up, in all the previous cases the speaker is strengthening his resolve to
fulfill his speech act promising.

2.2.4 Felicity Condition of Promising

In distinguishing acts, Searle (1979) further developed Austins (1962) proposes a
classification of conditions that must be held for a successful speech act. Searle (1979: 44)
distinguishes between (1) propositional act , (2) preparatory, (3) sincerity and (4) essential
conditions for an act. If those conditions are fulfilled an utterance, it is considered as
felicitious.
Propositional content conditions define the type of meaning expressed by the
propositional part of an utterance. Preparatory conditions specify prerequisites to the
performance of the speech act. Sincerity conditions are obligatory for the speech act to be
performed sincerely. Essential conditions clarify what the speech act must count as.
Searle (1979) proposes a series of conditions for speech act. Here are Scarles rules
for promising: S is the speaker, H is the hearer, and A is the action.
Propositional act Speaker (S) predicates a future act (A) of speaker (S)
Preparatory condition S believes that doing A is in Hs best interest
and that S can do A
Sincerity condition S intends to do A

19
 Essential condition S undertakes an obligation to do A.

So, utterance like I promise to come is felicitous if: (1) it addresses a future act of the
speaker, (2) the speaker believes the hearer would prefer the act to be done, (3) the speaker
truly intends to come, and (4) the speaker intends be obliged to do the act.
Searle (1976) and Mey (1993: 119) formulated nine conditions for a speech act to
count as promise:
Condition 1: normal condition must obtain for input and output. By this, one means
that speakers know how to deal with the language: they must of course speak it, and not have
any special handicaps (deafness, etc); furthermore, they must abstain from what Searle calls
parasitic use of language such as jokes and acting. This condition demands things to happen
as normally as possible, without the use of implicit meaning in language or even sarcasm, by
people who can speak the language well.
Condition 2: The promise must have content (Searle: the proportional content); that
which remains as the kernel of the utterance after we have done away with the promise part.
A promise is not a promise without content, simple as that. No act can happen when there is
no content in the act itself since it must have meaning for both interlocutors, including
promise.
Condition 3: At the moment of uttering, the content of the promise must have to do
with a future, a possible action of speaker. Promise is a commitment that is made by the
speakers regarding what he intends to achieve or to make it happen in the future. It needs a
specific purpose to bring a change and to shape a specific thing in the future to go according
to his intention.
Condition 4: What is being promised must be the advantage of the promisee. The
different between promise and a threat, according to Searle (1969: 58) is that a promise is a
pledge to do something to you, not for you. Thus, eventhough the speaker says the word
promise but the intention is to do something bad to the hearer, it is not considered a
promise, but a threat.
Condition 5: The content of the promise must not be something which clearly is going
to happen anyway: I cant promise anybody that the sun will rise tomorrow. Promise is not a
prediction or prophecy or a way to state obvious facts.
Condition 6: This condition has to do with the sincerity of the promiser in carrying
out the act of promising. This implies that sincere promiser must intended to carry out the act
that he or she promises to do; without that intention, we have no sincere promise. A promise
20
cannot be said true or lie, yet it can be evaluated based on the felicity or the real intention of
the speaker. We cannot state that the promise is a lie but we can say that the promise is
felicitous.
Condition 7: This condition can be said to be cornerstone of Searles philosophy of
promises: a promiser intends to put him/herself under the obligation of carrying the promised
acts. This is more than just intending to carry out the act: only if the intention is corroborated
by this recognition of an inevitable obligation can one properly speak of a promise.
Condition 8: Here it is stated that the normal conditions of language use must apply,
such the uttering words like I promise have as their effect that the promisee now understand
that a promise is being made; or, more technically, that the utterance conventionally produces
this understanding in the promisee.
Condition 9: This final condition says that the sentence uttered (must be) one
which, by the semantically rules of the language, is used to make a promise. This means that
promise is realized through several ways that are specific only for making promises. Speakers
cannot say I ate the cake in making a promise since the meaning will not be an intention to
do something in the future. Thus, the speakers must follow the correct strategies of promise.
The conditions above, the condition 4 and 5 are what Searle called preparatory
condition, that is, conditions must have been met before we can begin to talk about promises
(Mey, 1993:120). Those conditions are crucial because the speakers cannot produce a
promise without them in the first place. Meanwhile, condition six is called sincerity
condition because it deals with the felicity and the intention of the speaker or promiser.
There is also a set of rules from the above conditions for correct promising behavior
according to Searle in Mey (1993). There are two kinds of rules; regulative and constitutive
rules (Mey, 1993: 121). Regulative rules deal with the way things must be done, while
constitutive rules are the rules that are made up afterwards. The regulative rules define what
constitutive rules say they do; but the constitutive rules determine the weight that is given
those rules in the daily exercise of them (Mey, 1993: 125).
In the case of speech acts to promise, there are four regulative rules and one
constitutive rule. Searle in Mey (1993: 122) also stated that the rules derived from the
conditions above are said to govern the force that is present in the promises, which is called
illocutionary force indicating device (IFID). IFIDs are defined as formulaic, routinized
expressions in which the speakers apology is made explicit by using a performative verb
(Blum-Kulka and Oldstain, 1984). So, in the case of promise, IFID can be defined as the

21
expressions that follow specific patterns that are explicitly used by the speaker in order to
perform a promise.
Here are five rules govern a successful use of the promise speech act, according to
Searle (1976) and Mey (1993: 122):
Rule 1: Only use IFID when the content of the utterance is about something which is
to happen in the future.
Rule 2: Only use the promissory IFID when the promise contains something that the
promise actually wants to happen to him or her.
Rule 3: Only use an IFID for promising when the promise of the content does not
concern the occurrence of an already scheduled, self-justifying or natural
happening.
Rule 4: Only use an IFID if you intend to carry out your promise.
Rule 5: Only use an IFID on condition that the promise is uttered and recognized
(accepted) as creating an obligation from the promiser to the promisee.

In the previous discussion, Searle (1976) and Mey (1993: 122) provided conditions
and rules for an act to be considered as a promise. He also said that only conditions 2-7 are
specific to the speech act of promising; 1, 8 and 9 hold for all speech acts, and are not proper
to promises. Thus, the table below, adapted from Searles rules and conditions in performing
speech act of promise, provide an image of the relationship between rules and conditions:

Table 1
Rules and Conditions in Performing Promise
Condition 2
Rule 1(prepositional/content rule)
Condition 3
Condition 4 and 5
Regulative Rule 2 and Rule 3 (preparatory rules)
(preparatory conditions)
Condition 6 (sincerity
Rule 4 (sincerity rule)
condition)
Condition 7 (essential
Constitutive Rule 5 (essential rule)
condition)

Moreover, Bernicot and Laval (2004) categorized promise into three kinds of
statements:

22
 1. Promise-to-act statements, which explicitly contain the verb promise followed
by a verb in the infinitive form. The grammatical subject of the sentence is the
person making the promise. The social act intentionally posed by the speaker is a
firm commitment (e.g., I promise to wash my bike).
2. Future-action statements, in which the verb is conjugated in the future tense. The
verb promise does not appear and the grammatical subject of the sentence is the
person making the promise. The social act intentionally posed by the speaker is a
commitment, but not a firm one (e.g., Ill wash my bike).
3. Predictive-assertion statements, in which the verb is in the passive voice and
future tense. The verb promise does not appear and the grammatical subject of
the sentence is not the person making the promise. In this case, there is no
commitment on the part of the speaker (e.g., My bike will be washed).
In addition, Hickey (1986) also categorized promise into promise with the verb
promise (which he later described consists of prophylactic commitments and optatives) and
promise without the verb promise. The function of prophylactic commitment is to put the
hearer at rest with regard to a state which normally should not occur but which may do so
(e.g., I promise not to forget your birthday). On the other hand, optatives express the wish
to produce a certain effect in the hearers. Since optatives are double-aged, they on the one
hand bind the speaker to a certain course of action and the other convey to the hearer the
information that the speaker has so bound himself (e.g., I promise not to bore you with my
lecture).
2.2.5 Strategies of Promising
Based on the theories above, the promise strategies can be concluded in the table
below (adopted from Bernicot and Lavals (2004) and Hickeys (1986) promise strategies):
Table 2
Promise Strategies
No Promise Explanation Example
Contains verb promise, I promise not to forget your
Prophylactic
the function is to put birthday.
commitment
hearer at rest I promise to wash my bike.
Promise-
1 Contains verb promise
to-act
expresses the wish to I promise not to bore you
Optative
produce a certain effect for with my lecture
hearer
2 Future-action The verb is in the future I will wash my bike
23
 tense
The verb is in passive
3 Predictive-assertion My bike will be washed
voice and future tense

2.3. Theoretical Framework

In order to describe better the relationship among the theories, the framework of this
study is shown in the diagram below:
Figure 1
Theoretical Framework

PRAGMATIC

SPEECH ACT

LOCUTIONARY ACT ILLOCUTIONARY ACT PERLOCUTIONARY ACT

REPRESENTATIVES DIRECTIVES COMMISSIVES EXPRESSIVES

DECLARATION

Rules
CONDITIONS PROMISE
Subjects
Distance, Dominance, Imposition
Language
PROMISING
STRATEGIES Transfer

PROMISE-TO- FUTURE PREDICTIVE

ACT ACTION ASSERTION

24
 The diagram above explains the relationship among the theories underlying the study
and the theoretical framework I use to analyse the data. Speech act, which is an important
part of pragmatics, are consists of five types (according to Searle); representatives, directives,
commissive, expressives, and declaration. I focus on promise, one of the commissive
speech acts and the data will be analysed according to the promising strategies by Bernicot
and Laval (2004) and Hikceys (1986). The speech act of promise is influenced by Searles
rules and conditions in performing speech act of promise, whereas the promising strategies
are influenced by the probable factors (distance, dominance, and imposition), learners
previous knowledge and language transfer.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section will discusses the methods of the research including

research design, subject of the research, technique of collecting the data
and method of analyzing the data.

3.1. Resea
rch Design
This research belongs to descriptive qualitative research. The research deals with
expressions of promises produced by Student of English as Foreign Language of State
University of Semarang. In order to avoid bias in qualitative research, I also used
triangulation in order to achieve a more balanced and detailed results. The triangulation is
applied in the multiple methods of collecting data and the multiple observers.
3.2. Objec
t of the Study
The writer would like to conduct a qualitative research in Students of English as
Foreign Language of State University of Semarang. So, the subjects were the students of
English as Foreign Language of State University of Semarang that consists of 15 students
were determined by assumption that they were used English as a mean of communication.
The object of the study was utterances of promise produced by Students of English as
Foreign Language of State University of Semarang.
3.3. Roles
of the Researcher
I will have three roles in this study which will be explained below:
1. The data collector
25
 I collected data from the subjects or the respondent by giving out DCT questionnaires
and interview the subjects individually in a role play to be recorded as an audio data.
2. The data analyst
I transcribe the audio data and analyse the whole data
3. The data reporter
I reported the results of the study

In this study, the writer or the researcher will be positioned as the outsider. She/he will
not include in the process. The learning process will be done as usual by the classroom
teacher.
3.4. Meth
od of Collecting Data
Instrument has an important role in collecting the data. Arikunto (2006:150-8)
explains that there are 6 types of instruments. They are test, questionnaire, interview,
observation, rating scale, and documentation.
There are two techniques I used to collect the data. The first is DCT (Discourse
Completion Test) provided with situations in which the respondents had to respond to the
statements. The data in this study were collected through a controlled elicitation method
called open questionnaire which is a modified version of Discourse Completion Test
(hereafter DCT) used in CCSARP project (Blum-Kulka, 1982). The aim of discourse
completion test (DCT) research, according to Schauer & Adolphs (2006) is to investigate a
linguistic act within highly predefined parameters. Moreover the use of a DCT allows
researchers to examine what speakers would say in specific contexts that are controlled for a
variety of factors, such as relationship to other interlocutors or the imposition on the
interlocutor for which the promise is expressed. In addition, the completion of the DCT by
multiple participants means that it reflects the intuition of more than one author (Schauer &
Adolphs, 2006).
DCT includes a brief description of the situation and a one participant dialogue. Each
situation consists of a brief description of the addressees characteristics important to this
study, namely, social distance (the relative degree of the social power of the interlocutors over
each other), and finally the offence being committed (Afghari & Kafiani, 2005). The two
main social factors specifically included in the situations, i.e., social distance and social
dominance, were selected because they have been found to play a decisive role in the speech
act realization patterns within the cross cultures (Ervin-Tripp, 1976; Brown and Levison,
1989; Goody, 1978; Blum-Kulka, 1982). Following Van Eks (1976) dichotomy of distance/
26
+distance an Afghari and Kafiani (2005), the social distance perceived between the
interlocutors in their study was also a binary valued variable. That is to say, the interlocutors
either had a close relationship (-distance) or hardly knew each other (+distance). The social
dominance or the power relationship between the participants in the study was assigned three
values: status equal (e.g., student-student), speaker dominance (e.g., student-his/her
younger sister or brother) and hearer dominance (e.g., student-professor). The last factor
that should be considered, according to Trosborg (1994) is the imposition. A promise can be
said to have low imposition if the thing that is promised is not a big deal for the promiser. On
the other hand, a promise that has high imposition is a promise that is considered a big deal
for the promiser.
The second instrument of collecting data is role play. Kasper & Rose (2002: 86)
defined role play as a social or human activity in which participants take on and act out
specified roles often within a predefined social network or situational blueprint. Thus, the
subjects were given detailed information about the situations and their roles. Each of them
was given time to read and understand the situation, and they are allowed to clarify their roles
and situation beforehand. The role play itself was recorded. Role play can be considered
natural since the data is gathered from a spontaneous answer from the subjects. Moreover,
the authenticity of the data can be considered since the subjects are from a high level of an
EFL conversation class.
Thus, the two instruments of collecting data (DCT and role play) were made while
considering the three factors: distance, dominance and imposition to be put in different
situations. In order to cover all factors in all situations, I made pattern of the situations that
can be seen in the table below:
Table 3
Details of the Situations
N DCT Role play
o

27
 1 -D, E, -I -D, E, -I
2 -D, E, +I -D, E, +I
3 +D, E, -I +D, E, -I
4 +D, E, +I +D, E, +I
5 -D, SD, -I -D, SD, -I
6 -D, SD, +I -D, SD, +I
7 -D, HD, -I -D, HD, -I
8 -D, HD, +I -D, HD, +I
9 +D, SD, -I +D, SD, -I
10 +D, SD, +I +D, SD, +I
11 +D, HD, -I +D, HD, -I
12 +D, HD, +I +D, HD, +I

NOTE:
D: Distance, -D: Close Relationship, +D: Distance Relationship/hardly knows each
other, E: Equal Status, SD: Speaker Dominance, HD: Hearer Dominance, -I: Low
Imposition, +I: High Imposition.
The table above shows that one situation, both in DCT and role play, must fulfill the
required possible factors in application. Situation number 1 in DCT, for example, stated -D,
E, -I. It means that situation number 1 is designed to have close relationship, equal status,
and low imposition between the speaker and the hearer. The same design is also applied in
situation number 1 of role play.

3.5. Meth
od of Analyzing Data
There are several types I used in the method of analyzing the data since the data are in
the form of qualitative data. Those are transcribing, coding, classifying and interpreting.
Firstly, transcribing deals with the process of transcribing the sound data from the role
play activity. In this process I transcribe the recording data (audio data) into written text by
listening to the audio data, and writing it down. Since I used both DCT data and role play
data to support each other, the data that needs transcribing is only from the role play.
Secondly, coding is giving code to the speech act of promising, based on the data I
gathered. The next step, classifying is the process to classify the data based on the promise
strategies proposed by Bernicot and Laval (2004). These two steps are done at the same time
since I give codes (which are in the forms of numbers) and put them in different columns in a
tables in order to classify them. The next classification is based on the probable factors of

28
promising strategies. In this step, each factor has different situations in which they are suited
to the purpose. The coding and classification tables will be in the appendix.
Finally, in the interpreting phase, I will interpret the data which can be seen and
explained in the following chapter.

REFERENCES

Ariff, Tun Nur A. Z & Ahmad I. Mugableh. 2013. Speech Act of Promising among Jordanians.
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol 3, 13, 248-266.

Austin, John. 1962. How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press.

Bach, Kent and Harnish M.Robert, 1982. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts.
Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Brown, P. & Levinson. 1987. Some Universal in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge
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