EPC565 - PRAGMATICS IN BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL SETTINGS

ASSIGNMENT 3

GROUP:

LG2404Bi

SUBMITTED BY:

1. FATINA AMIRA BINTI AMRAN (2019201152)

2. NUR AINA BINTI AZHAR (2019423232)

SUBMITTED TO:

DR SITI AEISHA JOHARRY

Table of contents

Content Page

Abstract 3

Introduction 3-5

Methodology 6

Findings 6-14

Discussion and Conclusion 15-16

References 17

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1.0 Abstract
Speech Acts, Cooperation and implicature and Politeness and Interaction are part of
important concepts and principles in pragmatics. How are these concepts and principles
used in a talk show/ podcast? In this paper, we are going to analyze a podcast from BFM
89.9: The Breakfast Grille, An All-Of-Society Approach for Equality produced by Roshan
Kanesan on March 8, 2021. This podcast is presented by Wong Shou Ning as the host and
the guest are YB Hannah Yeoh, MP for Segambut and Datin Paduka Che Asmah, former
CEO of Yayasan Kebajikan Negara. The transcribed podcast was analyzed using
qualitative method and discourse analysis. From the analysis made, it was found that the
guests of the podcast are more likely to commit positive politeness strategies than negative
politeness strategies. Positive politeness is highly used in the conversation to avoid any
misunderstanding or quarrels between the speakers especially in the social and
professional environment.

2.0 Introduction
According to Yule (1996) as cited in Susanto (2014), the definition of speech act is
actions performed through utterances. This means the speech is not just merely a
statement, but it functions as an action through the communication. Speech acts will be
performed when an apology, greeting, request, invitation, complaint, compliment or refusal
offered by a person. According to Yule (1996) as cited in Sintamuniati, Fitriani and Inayah
(2019), there are five classifications of speech acts which are declarations, representatives,
expressives, directives and commissives. Firstly, declarations mean the speech acts that
changes the reality by declaring something. For example, in the class where the teacher
dismisses the class which means the class ends and students are required to leave the
class. Secondly, the definition of representatives in speech acts is by stating or describing
something that the speaker believes to be true. Stating, swearing, claiming or believing is
one of the representatives in speech acts. For example, when the speaker said, “The
drawing is pretty.” So, the speaker stated and believed that the drawing that they saw was
pretty. Next, the expressives. Expressive in speech acts means the speakers express their
emotions or attitudes through words. For example, “Oh my, I’m so sorry for your loss”
indicates the speaker’s emotion that is sympathy towards the person that they talk to.
Directives is also one of the classifications of speech acts which means the desire of the
speaker that makes the other person to do an action. For example, “Can you switch on the
light?” which indicates the speaker wanting the other person to turn on the light by asking

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that question. Lastly, the commissives means a speech act that makes the speaker do
some future actions such as a promise, guarantee or refusal. For example, “I’ll come back
later” indicates the speaker has indirectly promised that they will come back later.

Direct and indirect speech acts involved in stating, interrogative, declarative and
imperative where the action can be done due to that speech. According to Yule (1996) as
cited in Susanto (2014), direct speech acts happen whenever there is direct relationship
between the structure and the function meanwhile indirect speech act will happen if there is
indirect relationship between the function and structure of the utterance. This means that
whenever direct speech acts occur, it is due to the speaker that speaks in direct meaning
and causes the hearer to commit an action. The speaker tends to use declaratives,
interrogative and imperative sentences when direct speech acts happen. For example,
“Close the door, please!” is the imperative sentence that has direct meaning and causes the
hearer to commit an action due to the command. For the indirect speech acts, the speaker
tends to speak with indirect meaning where the hearer understands the contextual meaning
and commits an action based on the utterances. Sometimes, the speaker tends to use a
statement or interrogative sentence for action to happen. For example, “Don’t you think it is
hot here?” is an interrogative sentence where the contextual meaning is not about asking
about the weather but the speaker’s utterance for the hearer to commit an action which is to
switch on the air conditioner. Therefore, within these direct and indirect speech acts,
illocutionary force and perlocutionary acts can be done. According to Hidayat (2016),
illocutionary force, locutionary act and perlocutionary are the types of speech acts.
According to Yule (1996) as cited in Hidayat (2016), locutionary speech act is the
meaningful utterances can be produced due to an act. Meanwhile, the illocutionary force
means the intention of the speakers in producing an utterance and the perlocutionary act is
the action as a consequence due to the illocutionary force made by the speaker.

According to Purwaningsih (2015), cooperative principle means the assumption between

the speaker and the hearer which cooperate with each other in order to achieve a
successful conversation which is proposed by Paul Grice. There are four maxims involved
in cooperative principle which are maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relation
and maxim of manner. Maxim of quality means the information that is given is genuine and
truthful. This means that the speaker only speaks with truthful information and justification
of information. Next, the maxim of quantity indicated the amount of information stated in the

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 conversation. Maxim of relation means the relevance of the information stated in the
conversation. Lastly, the maxims of manner require the speaker to be clear and avoid
ambiguity in giving information during the conversation.

Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness includes face, positive face, negative face,
face threatening act and bald on record. Brown and Levinson (1978) implied that a need to
be polite is required in all cultures (as cited in Shadia, 2009). In their study, Brown and
Levinson (1978) have come to a conclusion that a person must recognize the face of the
other person for the aim to get into social relationships (as cited in Shadia, 2009). Face is
defined as the self-image of a person in public. Face is split up to two, positive face and
negative face. The need to be accepted by others and treated as a part of the group can be
defined as a person's positive face while negative face is the need to have freedom of
action and be independent without being controlled by other people. Politeness is
described as the act of recognizing another person's face. If a person says something to
decrease the probable harm, some of the acts could be viewed as a threat to one's face,
which falls under the face-saving act (FSA). A face-threatening act (FTA), on the other
hand, is when anything is stated that threatens another person's self-image.

There are four factors contributing to politeness, they are as follows:

1) Status: People from higher status will have more politeness expressed to them from
people with lower status.
2) Age: How politeness is expressed is determined by the speaker's and hearer's ages.
3) Gender: Gender differences are common in all cultures; a culture might practice
politeness to women more than men and another culture might practice politeness to men more.
4) Social Distance: The closer a person is to another person, the less polite they will be to
each other.

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3.0 Methodology
Qualitative research method and discourse analysis were used in this assignment as it is
the best method suited to the assignment. Firstly, an online podcast, An All-Of-Society
Approach for Equality produced by Roshan Kanesan was chosen from an online website, BFM
89.9: The Breakfast Grille. The podcast chosen was made sure to be in the average duration of
20 minutes and audible. The link for the chosen podcast was then shared to the class lecturer
for approval. After receiving the approval, the podcast was transcribed and submitted to the
lecturer for comments to improve on the transcription. Upon receiving the comments from the
class lecturer, the transcription was edited to be used in the next part. For the second part of the
assignment, five exchanges were chosen from the transcribed podcast and analyzed using the
concepts and principles in pragmatics: (1) Speech Acts, Cooperation and implicature, (2)
Politeness and Interaction.

4.0 Findings
Exchange 1

NAME DIALOGUES FTA/ POLITENESS THEORY

Now, I just want to lay the Face-threatening Act

groundwork first and I want to know - The interviewee raised a question
Wong Shou Ning from your community work. What about the observation about
(host) have you observed as the most women’s issues which is quite
pressing issues women faced sensitive to the people listening to
today? the podcast.

Positive politeness strategies

So, during Covid, we have to accept
Datin Paduka Che the fact that women are the most 1) Give reasons
Asmah affected one. There were studies
2) Use in-group identity markers
that shows that 70% of the
women globally are involved in 3) Raise common ground
the health workforce. This means
that, uh, when they are affected
through their occupations, so their
families are also affected. And we
know also for sure that the care
work are mostly dominated by
women, so mainly the women play
the role as caregiver. So under the
Covid with all the lockdowns and,
uh, everybody is working from
home, children are not going to

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 school, so actually it adds more
stress to the women in handling
the whole family while at the same
time, the women also need to do the
work from home. I have a statistic
here that actually the... about 70%
of women suffer loss of incomes
and 30% experience completely
loss of incomes. So, this is how
women are affected. Another
section that I do not want to miss is
to talk about the gender- based
violence, because they are actually
exposed to higher possibility of
being mistreated or exposed to
violence because of the lockdown
where they are all staying in a home
together with the abuser

According to the table of exchange 1, it can be seen that the interviewer, Wong Shou Ning,
has committed one of the classifications of speech which is the directives. This is directive
as it functions as the command for the interviewee to answer the question given earlier. In
this case here, Wong Shou Ning committed indirect speech acts as she asked the Datin
Paduka Che Asmah on her observation regarding the most pressing issues women faced
instead of directly stating the observation that had been done by Datin.

As a result of illocutionary force where Wong Shou Ning asked about the observation, the
perlocutionary act was done by Datin Paduka Che Asmah as she answered the question.
Some of the answers from the observation that women faced stated by Datin Paduka Che
Asmah are “stress in handling the whole family, gender-based violence and loss of
incomes”. However, based on the answers given by Datin Paduka Che Asmah, she actually
has committed the violation of the maxim of relation. This is because based on her answer
which is “This means that, uh, when they are affected through their occupations, so their
families are also affected,” it shows that the answer is not relevant to the question given by
Wong Shou Ning. Wong Shou Ning asked about her observation of the most pressing issue
women faced and Datin Paduka includes the family which is not relevant to the question.

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 Based on the exchange 1 we can clearly see that the FTA has been made by the
interviewer by raising a sensitive question which is related to the problems faced by women
today. As a result, from the FTA, it is clearly telling that the interviewee answers them by
raising a common ground which is stress in handling the whole family, gender-based
violence and loss of incomes. The interviewee tends to raise the common ground because
of the question which related to the question about the observation. Next is to give reasons.
The interviewee gives reasons as to the positive politeness to justify what they have said
from the common ground that they have stated earlier. For example is “So under the Covid
with all the lockdowns and, uh, everybody is working from home, children are not going to
school, so actually it adds more stress to the women in handling the whole family” which
indicated the reasons for the issues faced by the women. Lastly, as the question related in-
group identity markers, the interviewee tends to relate it since she is also a woman.
Therefore, sympathy and approval of women can be seen in the answer given by the
interviewee.

Exchange 2

NAME DIALOGUES FTA/POLITENESS

THEORY

Wong Shou Ning Okay but a remarkable observation I have thought FTA - Raised a
(host) and it’s actually a positive one. It's that the gaps left sensitive question
by the government of the day today because I about the support from
think, not all the needs of the, you know, of the the government to the
after rakyat are being mad is that it was actually people.
quite taken up by community- based organizations
and I think their efforts have played a major role in
self- sustaining the community during this
pandemic, you know, really the rallying cry reeling
cried of #kitajagakita is really true in Covid-19. But
in the long term, right, for it to be sustainable and
have greater reach, don’t we actually need
support from more stakeholders, especially the
government?

Datin Paduka Che As rightly pointed out just now, I see that NGOs Positive Politeness
Asmah have been playing a very important role here. 1) Avoid disagreement
Now is the time that we should recognize the
role of NGO as the third sector beside the 2) Seek for agreement
government and the private sector. So somehow

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 3) Making joke
people tend to give donations more to NGOs. I
somehow feel that they trust the NGO can deliver Negative politeness
the work better. I know that there are some efforts
that are being done by the government in 1) Apologize
distributing the food basket, but we also hear of a
lot of problems where, you know, there are a lot of
leakages, I do not know how much aof basket
would cost. *laughs* For example RM100 budget,
you know the actual food that finally gets delivered
would probably just between RM60 or at the most
RM70 because then they take into account the
transportation, the cost of the basket and so on and
so on and so on. So, the leakage is quite obvious
sometimes and you can see that some NGOs are
delivering better quality food as compared to some
that are being distributed through the government
channel. I’m sorry I have to say this, but we have
seen it and w-we have evidence on it.

Based on the exchange 2, the question asked by Wong Shou Ning functions as indirect
speech act which is more to the directives. This is because Wong Shou Ning indirectly
asked which is the interrogative sentence of Datin Paduka Che Asmah by asking “ Don't we
actually need support from more stakeholders, especially the government?” This indicates
that Wong Shou Ning actually wants the interviewee’s statement regarding the support of
stakeholders. This means that the interviewer’s intention is for the interviewee to agree with
the interviewer and give some justifications about it.

Based on this question, an illocutionary force has been done by Wong Shou Ning which
is the question asked and perlocutionary act occurs as Datin Paduka Che Asmah answered
the question. Based on the answers given, Datin Paduka Che Asmah has committed the
violation of quantity. This is because based on the answers given by Datin, she only stated
about the NGOs’ roles in supporting the people, however she has not stated enough
information regarding the stakeholder’s or government support.

The FTA has been made by Wong Shou Ning since she raised a sensitive topic which is
related to the government and Datin’s opinion regarding the support of stakeholders or the
government. As a result of the FTA, some positive and negative politeness was made by

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 Datin Paduka Che Asmah. For example, one of her answers is that “I see that NGOs have
been playing a very important role here,” which indicates that she believes that NGOs play
more roles compared to the government which avoids disagreement. It is to avoid
disagreement because as much as the government gave support to the country, but she
stated that it is not more than how NGOs gave support. Next, is the “now is the time that we
should recognise the role of NGO” which indicates that the interviewee seeks for
agreement. As a part of NGO herself, the interviewee stated that people should
acknowledge the role of NGO which she wanted the listeners to agree with her statement.
Furthermore, the interviewee was making a joke by laughing in the statement “I do not
know how much aof basket would cost.” This means that she was trying to lighten the mood
by making a joke which indirectly caused positive politeness. Lastly, is the negative
politeness done by the interviewee which before the end of the answer she apologised, “I’m
sorry I have to say this, but we have seen it and w-we have evidence on it.” In this case, it
shows that the interviewee apologised before making the statement to show that the NGO
did so much better in delivering food.

Exchange 3

NAME DIALOGUE FTA/POLITENESS

THEORY

Wong Shou Ning (host) So Datin, what do you think that we should FTA - raised a
really do to help women get back into the sensitive question
workforce if that’s what they want? about workforce
related to women.

YB Hannah Yeoh Actually, it is very challenging now Positive Politeness

because women with already their jobs 1) Avoid
earlier are losing their job and now making disagreement
them come back with all those arrangements
that need to be done is another challenge. But 2) Give Reasons
then do we have a choice? I think those
women still need to go out and earn a living, 3) Be optimistics
especially the family headed by women. So
somehow this is where I think the
government should really understand the
problems and look at the proper
intervention on this part. It’s not about
announcing that you have given away how
many food baskets as a sign of helping but
actually is to see how this year… We want to

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 see how you bring back all those papers
back to the level where they work before
Covid. So there needs to be a lot of upscaling,
rescaling, identifying new types of jobs that
come with proper training.

Based on the exchange 3, we can clearly see that the question asked by Wong Shou Ning
is also an indirect speech act which can be seen as the directives from the classification of
the speech act. This is because instead of just give any statement of an agreement about
women need to go back to their workforce, she asked question with “what do you think that
we should really do to help women get back into the workforce if that’s what they want,”
which shows that she wants Datin’s agreement for the women to get back into the
workforce.

Next, the illocutionary act and perlocutionary forces can be seen in exchange 3 as the
interviewee asked a question regarding the opinion of women getting back into the
workforce. As a result of the illocutionary act, perlocutionary force is done by Datin Paduka
Che Asmah as she answered the questions by giving her opinions regarding the topics.

For the FTA, the FTA has been committed by Wong Shou Ning, the interviewer, by
asking an indirect question which is “what do you think that we should really do to help
women get back into the workforce if that’s what they want.” In this case here, FTA can be
seen as it is also a sensitive question to the listeners and the interviewer here tends to take
away the freedom of action from the interviewee by asking specific questions. As a result of
FTA, the interviewee made some positive politeness which is to avoid disagreement, give
reasons and be optimistics. To avoid disagreement, instead of directly disagreeing with the
question the interviewee said, “Actually it is very challenging now because women with
already their jobs earlier are losing their job,” which means they indirectly said it is very hard
for women to get back to the workforce. Next, giving reasons can be seen as the
interviewee by stating “So somehow this is where I think the government should really
understand the problems and look at the proper intervention on this part,” which means that
the reason why it is challenging is because the government should have looked it up.
Lastly, be optimistic can be seen in the statement where the interviewee said that “We want
to see how you bring back all those papers back to the level where they work before Covid,”

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which can be clearly seen that the interviewee was trying to be polite on talking about
workforce since it is about the government.

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 Exchange 4

NAME DIALOGUE FTA/POLITENESS

THEORY

Wong Shou Ning (host) But I don’t know whether Covid it is a

legitimate excuse for things not being run and
maybe this is a question for you Hannah, have
you had any engagement with the ministry
on the ground especially with regards to
work that needs to be done in Segambut?

YB Hannah Yeoh Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat is still very

helpful. They helped me a lot whenever I have
to refer cases to them but again like I said, I
think Covid even though it gives a new set
of problems but I think it has also helped
us appreciate more of online meetings and
because of online meetings you actually save
a lot of time from traveling and so I think
there's no excuse minister and deputy
ministers not meeting stakeholders or you
know it’s not difficult to organize a zoom
meeting. In fact, you can do this nationwide
you don't have to be like us last time we had to
go to so many events to meet stakeholders
because people just want to see you, right?
But now you have Zoom, there's no reason
and then you have so many hours in a day.

According to the table, the utterances in bold by the host, Wong Shou Ning falls under the
classification of speech acts, directives. In this exchange, Wong Shou Ning directly asked YB
Hannah Yeoh if she had any engagement with the ministry on the ground, making it as a direct
speech act. This particular utterance also acts as illocutionary act when the host requests for
information from the guest, YB Hannah Yeoh on whether or not she engaged with the related
ministry specifically matters related to Segambut.

In response to the host’s illocutionary act, YB Hannah Yeoh have done perlocutionary force by
stating that she had engagement with Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat and gave her opinions on
the new norm of online meetings. Here, YB Hannah Yeoh seems to be violating the maxim of
relation. She did answer that she had engagement with Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat but she

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did not relates it to matters need to be done in Segambut which the host had specifically asked
her. In addition, a big part of her answers were online meetings which are clearly not related to
the question asked.

The response by YB Hannah Yeoh can be seen as a response that will contribute to her
positive face as the utterance, “Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat is still very helpful. They helped
me a lot whenever I have to refer cases to them” gave the idea that she has been doing her
work as Member of Parliament for Segambut and serving the people well. Utterances in
exchange 5 are not face-threatening in nature. Thus, there is no FTA.

Exchange 5
NAME DIALOGUE FTA/POLITENESS
THEORY

Wong Shou Ning (host) You know there is very sobering data on FTA - Raised a
gender inequality in Malaysia. So, let's discuss question on why
that because the global gender gap index government is failing
report for 2020 shows that unfortunately in fighting gender
Malaysia ranks 104 out of 153 countries and inequality.
this is the second lowest in ASEAN. It places
us 97 in economic empowerment for women of
full since 2018 and I think we've talked about
the low female labor force participation rate in
this country. Now I want to know why are we
failing so badly, you know what are really the
stumbling blocks here because we need to
look beyond Covid 19 right so Datin, is it our
society, our education or maybe even in the
house?

Datin Paduka Che First, I think we have to also manage the Positive Politeness
Asmah stereotyping and perceptions of women 1. Give reasons
leaders because women leaders are always
being judged in a stereotype manner where 2. Seek agreement
first women normally they are faced with
challenges in trying to have a balance work
life whether they are married or single,
every woman has a family to serve, right?
………. So those are the things that we need
to address and talking about the perceptions
and stereotyping, I think women are very much
still being evaluated against a masculine

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 standard of leadership. ….So these are the
things that we need continuous education to
educate our society to accept women’s
leadership in a better way.

From exchange 5 in the table above, again we can see that the host, Wong Shou Ning
uses directives speech act when she asked Datin Paduka Che Asmah on the reasons why
government is failing in empowering women and improving the country’s global gender gap
index. Directives speech act is commonly committed by the host as the format of this podcast is
to get answers and opinions from the guests.

The question given by Wong Shou Ning to Datin Paduka Che Asmah serves as
illocutionary force to where Datin Paduka Che Asmah answered it the main point of educating
the people in the effort to fight the existing stereotype and perceptions towards woman leaders.

For this exchange, there is FTA commited by Wong Shou Ning when she asked the
question’ “Now I want to know why are we failing so badly, you know what are really the
stumbling blocks here because we need to look beyond Covid 19 right so Datin, is it our society,
our education or maybe even in the house?’. In this context, the FTA is not directly towards the
interviewee, Datin Paduka Che Asmah, but it is more likely to affect the government on the
failure of implementing gender equality and fighting gender inequality. To mitigate the FTA,
Datin Paduka Che Asmah used positive politeness strategies of give reasons, seek agreement
and raise common ground. Firstly, she gave the reason on why the government are failing to
improve on the gender index gap is because “stereotyping and perceptions of women leaders
because women leaders are always being judged in a stereotype manner”. Then, she seek
agreement from the host by stating, “….women normally they are faced with challenges in trying
to have a balance work life whether they are married or single, every woman has a family to
serve, right?”. Here, she was trying to get the listeners to agree with her opinion and reduce the
effect of FTA.

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5.0 Discussion and Conclusion

Based on the findings, it is clearly shown that the exchanges between the interviewer
and interviewees who are Wong Shou Ning, Datin Paduka Che Asmah and Hannah Yeoh
caused the speech acts to happen. As for the classification of speech acts, the interviewer
tends to use directives as their speech act by giving requests by asking questions indirectly
to the interviewees. Therefore, illocutionary force and perlocutionary act has been done
between the interviewer and interviewees. However, despite the answers given by the
interviewees, it clearly shows that the interviewees have committed the violations of maxim
several times in answering the questions. Most of the time, instead of not answering the
question, the interviewee tends to give different answers which means they violated
maxims.

Based on the findings, we can clearly tell that the interviewee prefers to commit positive
politeness strategies instead of negative politeness. As we can see from the answers of the
interviewees, positive politeness such as giving reasons, be optimistic, avoiding
disagreement and seeking for agreement can be seen in the findings of the FTA. Positive
politeness is highly used in the conversation to avoid any misunderstanding or quarrels
between the speakers especially in the social and professional environment. Positive and
negative politeness are very important in any educational, social and professional setting
because it is to avoid any sensitivity in any conversation that has been done especially
when it is involved with people in work where high hierarchy or someone’s older included
when we speak to them.

Based on these findings, it can be clearly seen that there are some limitations from this
paper. This paper only includes the speech acts and politeness strategies involved in the
podcast that have been analysed which means that it is more to small scale research. Not
only that, the transcriptions that have been done are being transcribed based on the human
instrument where the researchers themselves listened to the podcast and transcribed it one
by one. Therefore, the written transcription that has been done may not be perfect as in the
machine. The podcast also focuses on the women’s struggle in the pandemic and all the
speakers involved are women which means it leads to agreements instead of
disagreement. Therefore, there are some speech acts which cannot be seen in this
research as the paper as the speakers involved in the same group of people.

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 Based on this research paper, some recommendations for further research are by
searching speech acts in the workforce such as the conversation between the employer
and employee. We can see more on the FTA and politeness theory made by those people
as they are from different hierarchies. Furthermore, the interactions between the teachers
and students also can be done for further research as the interaction involves people who
are in different education levels and ages.

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Purwaningsih, S. (2015). The Pragmatics Analysis of the Cooperative Principle in a Comedy

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repository.perpus.iainsalatiga.ac.id/315/1/Siti%20Purwaningsih_11310115.pdf

Sintamutiani, D. P. (2019). An Analysis of Speech Act Classification in Beauty and The Beast.
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Susanto, G. A. A. (2014). The Illocutionary Acts and Characteristics of Public Notices in Public
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