Abstract
Speech act analysis is an act of investigating how utterances not only disseminate information but perform actions as well. Dialogues in Henshaw’s This Is Our Chance are not only employed to exchange information about animosity between the people of Koloro Village and the people of Udura Village but to take actions on matters that involved the two neighbouring villages. The present paper seeks to explore the dialogues in the above mentioned text to see how they have been used. The paper adopts speech act theory of J. L. Austin which was later developed by J. R. Searle. The data for the study were analysed based on speech act theory. Components of directive speech act such as commands and questions are used extensively in the text while those like requests, advice, directives and warnings are used insignificantly; constituents of representative speech act, namely, statements and reports run throughout the text; elements of expressive speech act such as complaints and appreciations are found in the text; declaration speech acts, and constituent of commissive speech act such as promise are used scantly in the text. The study concludes that speech act theory is the most appropriate instrument for handling civil conflict.
Highlights
Speech act theory is a subfield of pragmatics that is employed to study how words are used to disseminate information but to carry out actions
The theory is richer than earlier tendency to think only in term of propositional truths (Ian, 2020) Traun (n.d.) asserts that the basic insight of speech act theory is not just to transmit information but to carry out action which will change the state of affairs of the participants in a conversation
The researcher noticed that speech acts such as Directives, Representatives, Expressives, Declarations and Commissives are used in the text
Summary
Speech act theory is a subfield of pragmatics that is employed to study how words are used to disseminate information but to carry out actions . The theory is richer than earlier tendency to think only in term of propositional truths (Ian, 2020) Traun (n.d.) asserts that the basic insight of speech act theory is not just to transmit information but to carry out action which will change the state of affairs of the participants in a conversation. James Ene Henshaw is a Nigerian playwright of Efic tribe He has written a number of plays which treat different aspects of African cultures and traditions. Attempts to revive him prove abortive until Kudaro treats him with an antidote given to her by her teacher before he recovers This good deed makes Mboli, the chief of Udura, to release Kudaro and seeks to be at peace with the people of Koloro. The study may be beneficial to the general public in the sense that they will employ dialogue in handling civil crisis as it is very effective in dealing with such a matter
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