Illocutionary Speech Act Analysis in Nipashe Newspapers’ Headlines

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to look at headline writers’ intentions from Tanzanian Nipashe newspapers and classify them in accordance with illocutionary speech acts Taxonomy by Searle (1979). The study employed a qualitative research approach and a descriptive research design. The study involved the population of 1095 front-page newspaper headlines. A sample of 130 headlines was chosen and each headline was classified according to the taxonomy of illocutionary Speech Act. Out of the five categories of speech acts developed by J.R. Searle (1979), which served as the theoretical foundation for the study, four speech acts were found to be executed in the sampled newspaper headlines, with the representative speech act type predominating. Claiming, urging, remembering, reporting, recommending, assuring, bragging, concluding and deducing were some of the assertives' or representatives' illocutionary acts that appeared in the headlines. Directive headlines surveyed were used by copy editors to request, order, command, question and suggest that readers of the newspapers do something. Some headlines included commissive speech acts, which copy editors used to commit themselves to future actions. The headlines with expressive illocutionary acts were used by the editors to thank, pardon, apologize, blame, deplore, congratulate, regret and praise. There was no declarative speech act performed in the Nipashe newspaper headlines. The study recommends that the newspaper writers continue executing assertive speech acts in their headlines if they wish to tell the truth, use commissive speech acts if they want to make commitments about future events, use directive speech acts if they want readers to do something, use expressive speech acts to draw the attention of their readers and express their emotions and feelings and use declarative speech acts if they want to change the world and the attitudes of their readers at large.