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

Authors

  • Chusni Hadiati

    English Department, Jenderal Soedirman University, Banyumas, Central Java 53123, Indonesia
  • Nadia Gitya Yulianita

    English Department, Jenderal Soedirman University, Banyumas, Central Java 53123, Indonesia
  • Usep Muttaqin

    English Department, Jenderal Soedirman University, Banyumas, Central Java 53123, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i5.8914
Received: 1 March 2025 | Revised: 18 April 2025 | Accepted: 28 April 2025 | Published Online: 9 May 2025

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.

Keywords:

Felicity Condition; Pragmatics; Context; Indonesia; Utterance

References

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How to Cite

Hadiati, C., Yulianita, N. G., & Muttaqin, U. (2025). Commissives Speech Acts on COVID-19 News in The Jakarta Post. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 7(5), 748–763. https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i5.8914

Issue

Vol. 7 , Iss. 5 (May 2025)

Article Type

Article

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Copyright © 2025 Chusni Hadiati, Nadia Gitya Yulianita, Usep Muttaqin

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This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.