ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
Pragmatics is the branch of linguistics which involves the study of the contextual meanings of words and phrases as well as sentences in terms of spoken and written communication. As technologically-enabled means of communication, social media and YouTube are prominent and play important roles as marketing tools. In this context, TED Talks are useful for creating awareness among the young generation about significant issues, inspiring, motivating and cultivating their confidence so as to encourage them in the pursuit of their career goals. The ideas promulgated by TED speakers are often impressive, producing powerful influences on audiences. However, it could be rather difficult to comprehend the intended meanings of the language used by these speakers from the pragmatic perspective, where it has its own functions in relation to the choice of words in the speech. Therefore, the present study investigates the way speech acts are utilised by TED Talk speakers and how audiences are attracted to and convinced by their presentation skills. The data was collected from the TED Talks webpage and the talks were based on millennial workplace. The data was analysed qualitatively (Creswell, 2014) by applying speech act theory (Searle, 1979) in the analysis of assertive, directive, expressive, commissive, and declarative illocutionary acts. The findings show that assertive types were the most predominantly used by these three speakers in conveying their intended ideas. The findings further reveal that directive types were the second most used by the speakers, the purpose of which was to incite the listeners to deliberate on the ideas expressed in the talks based on the topics. It is hoped that the present study provides ideas to speakers for choosing the appropriate speech acts in conveying their intended messages in their talks.
Akmajian, A., Demers, A. R., Farmer, K. A., & Harnish, M. R. (2010). Linguistics, an
introduction to Language and Communication, (6thEd). London: The MIT Press (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Altikriti, S. (2016).Persuasive Speech Acts in Barack Obama’s Inaugural Speeches (2009,
2013) and The Last State of the Union Address (2016), International Journal of Linguistics, 8(2), 47-66
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1962.
Austin, J. (1963). Performative-Constative. In: Searle, J. (ed.) 1971. Philosophy
and Ordinary Language, pp.1-12. London: Oxford University Press.
Ayeomoni, M. O., & Akinkuolere, S. O. (2012). A Pragmatic Analysis of
Victory and Inaugural Speeches of President Umaru Musa Yar?Adua. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(3). 10.4304/tpls.2.3.461-468.
Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Bates, E. (1996). Language and context: The Acquisition of pragmatics, Orlando, Florida:
Academic Press
Berry, M. (1975). Introduction to Systemic Linguistics: 1 Structures and Systems. London:
Batsford.
Creswell, J. (2018). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods
Approaches (5th ed.) SAGE Publications, Inc.
Deveci, T. (2010). The use of complaints in the inter-language of Turkish EFL learners. (El
uso de losreclamos en el Inter- Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 12(2), 25-42.
Abdulkarim, F. (2018). A Pragmatic Study of Speech Acts in School Speeches.
Fillmore, C. (1981). Pragmatics and the Description of Discourse. In: Cole, P. Radical
Pragmatics, pp. 143-167. New York: New Academic Press.
Haselow, A. (2019).Discourse marker sequences: Insights into the serial order of
Communicative tasks in real-time turn production, Journal of Pragmatics,146, 1-18, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.04.003
Huang, Y. (2007). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kasper, G. (1997). Can pragmatic competence be taught? Honolulu: University of Hawaii,
Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Retrieved, 18 March, 2019 from http:www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/Net-Works/NW06/.
Lazaraton, A. (2001). Teaching oral skills. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a
Second or Foreign Language (3rd ed., pp. 103-115). Boston, USA: Heinle & Heinle, Thomson Learning Inc.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Li, W. (2002). What do you want me to say?’ On the conversation
analysis approach to bilingual interaction. Language in Society-Lang Soc, 31,(1), 02-28.
Li, Y., & Anchalee, W. (2018). A cross-cultural pragmatic study of the speech act of
Complaining by native Thai and Chinese speakers, Journal of Social Sciences xxx,
1-7.
Marquez, R. R. (2002). A contrastive study of conventional indirectness in Spanish: Evidence
from Peninsular and Uruguayan Spanish. Pragmatics, 12(2), 135-151.
Mahdalena, Anni, H. P., & Wy Dirgeyasa. (2018). Illocutionary act in acehnese
women’s gossip, Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, (5), 2,162-176
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded
sourcebook (Second Edi). Sage Publications.
Morley, G. (1985). An Introduction to systemic grammar. Hongkong: Macmillian.
Nunan, D. (1999). Syllabus design on Pragmatic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Okan, O., & Abdulvahit, C. (2018). A comparative study on speech acts: formal
complaints by native speakers and Turkish learners of English, Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 239-259.
Peter, J., Benjamin, B., & Ulf, S. (2019). Speech acts in professional maritime discourse: A
Pragmatic risk analysis of bridge team communication directives and
commissives in full-mission simulation, Journal of Pragmatics, 140, 12-21
Rafieyan, V. (2016). Effect of ‘focus on form’ versus ‘focus on forms’ pragmatic instruction
on development of pragmatic comprehension and production. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(20), 41-48.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1979). A classification of illocutionary Acts. In: Language in society 5,
pp. 1-24.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yule, G. (2006). The Study of Language, Third Edition. USA: Cambridge University Press
Wodak, R. (2013). Critical discourse analysis. London, UK; Sage.
In-Text Citation: (Ramalingam et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Ramalingam, S., Krishnan, I. A., Thamir, S. F., Ramiah, V. D. G., Kandasamy, P., & Baskaran, S. (2021). Are TED Talks Promising to the Audiences? Application of Speech Acts. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(10), 860 – 876.
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode