An Analysis of Representative Speech Acts and Basics Emotions in the 2016 US Presidential Debates

In the presidential debates, each candidate conveyed ideas, claims, and criticism. The wordsused can be a speech act that refers to the basic units of communication in which utterances areviewed as social acts that fulfil social functions. This study investigates types and function of thespeech act of representatives and the strong feelings expressed in the speech act. Speech act ofrepresentative refers to acts in which the words state what the speakers believes to be the case;and these can be found in the presidential debates. In the presidential debates, each candidateconveyed ideas, claims, and criticism. According to Searle (1976) there five types of speech acts,they are representative, directive, commissive, expressive, and declaration. Every utterance thatrefers to asserting, informing, reporting, claiming, and fact stating can be said as representativespeech acts in which words delivered based on what the speaker believes to be the case.(Cutting, 2003). Furthermore, each of the speech act of representative can be followed by theemotional expressions like anger, sadness, joy, and fear. In this research, the writer analyzed thebasic emotions expressed in each types of representative speech acts. Some theories used toobserved the basic emotions are Parrot (2001): Fiehler (2002); Yanti (2013).The method used in analyzing the research is qualitative method that refers scientificmethod of observation to collect types of representative speech acts and basic emotion. It refersto the meaning, concepts, definitions, and drawing conclusions. Data were taken from threetranscripts of the 2016 US presidential debates posted on the web Washington Post. The writerobserved three transcripts of the 2016 US Presidential Debates between Donald Trump andHillary Clinton in terms of utterances that refers to the representative speech acts and basicemotions expressed through the words used by both of them. Then, the procedures done werecollecting, classifying the data based on the purpose of the study, analyzing those classified data,interpreting the result of data analysis, and drew a conclusion.The results show that there are a number of types of representative speech act used, forexample asserting, reporting, informing, claiming, and fact stating. These are influenced byvarious contexts in terms of physical context, epistemic context, and linguistic context. Fromthose types used, the writer found that asserting used by both of Hillary Clinton and DonaldTrump in terms of repetition to assert their opinions. In the type of speech act informing HillaryClinton gives the information she had previously thought and implicitly. In type speech actsinforming Donald Trump gives the information directly to the point of discussion. In the speechacts claiming, Clinton claimed about what she had done, or her success. Similarly, Trump also Inclaimed what he had done but he tend to praise himself. Related to the basic emotions expressed,the writer found three basic emotions in the representative speech acts based on Parrot’s theorythey are Joy, Anger, and Sadness. In types of asserting the emotions of Hillary Clinton areoptimism, as a part of the primary emotion Joy; rejection as part of the primary emotion ofSadness, guilt (sadness), being annoyed (anger), exasperation (anger). Then, in the speech act ofreporting is the emotion of being disappointed (sadness). Other basic emotions expressed byClinton were are optimism (joy), pride (joy), disappointed (sadness), enthusiasm (joy) ininforming speech act representative. And, basic emotions expressed by Trump in the types ofspeech act of asserting were rejection (Sadness), optimism (Joy), exasperation (Anger), pride(Joy). In types of informing were feeling displeasure (Sadness), optimism (Joy), loathing(Anger), grumpiness (Anger), enthusiasm (Joy), and pride (Joy); and many other basic emotionsexpressed by both of the candidates.From the explanation, the writer can draw a conclusion that the basic emotions expressed ineach type of the representative speech acts. In asserting, the basic emotion of Joy, Sadness,Anger expressed by both of the candidates. In types of reporting Hillary Clinton tends to showthe basic emotions of Joy, that is strong feeling of optimism. In the speech acts of informing theemotions expressed were Joy and Sadness and Anger. The difference emotional expression fromboth of the candidates were sadness emotions. Hillary Clinton tends to inform something withdisappointed emotions (sadness) and Donald Trump tends to conveyed displeasure emotions.Trump usually informed something with anger expressions, namely loathing, grumpiness andexasperation. He showed his exasperation with the previous government differ from HillaryClinton. To claim something the emotion by both candidates is the same, namely (joy) pride and(joy) optimism. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, both of them felt proud of themselves andoptimism they would be voted as a president. In types of Fact stating by both candidates have thesame feeling, joy emotion and anger emotion. But, Donald Trump tends to show anger emotionsby using sarcastic words and tends to feel exaggerating to say the facts. He showed the facts andtried to convince people with the facts with his strong feeling of anger. From the data, the writertend to say that From that Clinton is more calm person and tends not to show her emotions inpublic. Meanwhile, Trump is more resolute and straight to the point with his words. Finally, theresearch is useful for people who study language in terms of words delivered have anillocutionary act to make people do something; the words are not only use as saying things butalso doing things. For further research, it is very interesting to study other aspects, such aslanguage use as representative of ideology, character, and politeness.Keywords: Speech act of Representative, Basic emotions, Types, The 2016 US presidentialDebates