The Study of Speech Acts on Joe Biden’s Victory Speech in the US Presidential Election 2020

Abstract

This study focuses on the phenomenon of speech acts in Joe Biden’s victory speech in the US presidential election 2020. There are 30 selected utterances taken from Joe Biden’s victory speech. This study applies a qualitative method. Moreover, the data in this study are in the form of utterances which contain speech acts. The analysis begins by classifying the types of speech acts used by Joe Biden in his victory speech using Searle’s theory of speech acts (1976), and the theory of context by Brown and Yule (1983). In total there are 30 utterances; 11 utterances are representative, 7 utterances are directive, 6 utterances are commissive, 5 utterances are expressive, and 1 utterance is declarative. The second research question is to reveal the implied meanings of the speech acts used by Joe Biden in his victory speech. The results of this study show that the implied meanings from Joe Biden’s utterances in his victory speech are about the commitments he will carry out in the future and to convince the audience of his sincerity in running for president of the United States of America by presenting the great programs he will run when in office and stresses the importance of unity in building and moving the nation forward.