Commissives Speech Acts on COVID-19 News in The Jakarta Post

Abstract

This article discusses the felicity conditions of commissive speech acts in The Jakarta Post regarding COVID-19 news, which contain promises, threats, and offers. Drawing on frameworks developed by Austin and Searle, and later elaborated by Levinson, this study applies a pragmatic lens to assess whether these speech acts are felicitous or infelicitous. Misleading or infelicitous reporting may contribute to the spread of misinformation, potentially shaping public perceptions of health risks during the pandemic. Individuals should be careful when producing or interpreting utterances. This qualitative study analyzed news articles published between September 2020 and January 2021, as it focuses on understanding and interpreting the underlying meaning and context of commissives speech acts (promise, threat, and offer) in COVID-19 news articles in The Jakarta Post. The analysis reveals three distinct sorts of commissives speech acts: promise, threat, and offer. None of these speech acts are expressed by the performative verbs "to promise," "to threaten," or "to offer," implying that the illocutionary-verb fallacy is frequent in the data. However, the language form that can be used to indicate commissives is futurity, accompanied by the utterance's content, which refers to the absence or presence of obligation or advantage. Additionally, the context of the utterance is critical in determining the speech acts. The findings of this study support Leech's hypothesis about the illocutionary-verb fallacy.