A Speech Act Analysis of English Utterances of Two Chinese Children in a Multilingual Setting

Abstract

A lot of scholarship on speech acts has focused on the implementation of speech actions by foreign learners (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Olshtain & Blum-Kulka, 1985; Yang, 2009). Most of these studies, however, adopt interview to conduct their study. This study explored 20 English utterances produced by two Chinese children in the Philippines, employing Speech Acts Theory of Austin and Searle. The results of the study concluded that illocutionary acts that are assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative were employed by both of the kids; there were some similarities and differences in the two kids’ speech acts; to some degree, speech acts can reflect the speaker’s characteristics. From the results, we can see that assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative are effective pragmatic strategies in communication for children. It is strongly recommended that we should do more research on English speech acts performance produced by Non-native English children living in a multilingual setting.