Merv's Utterance: To Catch Or Not To Breach

The utterance “Which I would prefer not to catch.” is identified as directive illocutionary act since it express what the speaker wants. Directive illocutionary act cause the hearer to take a particular action, in other words it is ordering someone to do something. In other words, the speaker in this case Merv is wanted Hilly as the hearer to take a particular action. The utterances performed action of warning since the speaker was telling the hearer about a possible trouble or danger and the speaker also tell the hearer to do an action in order to avoid the trouble or danger. The utterances used indirect speech act since the structural forms of sentence and the general communication function is not in the same line. While the declarative sentence is usually has a function to make a statement, in this case, the declarative sentence is used to warn someone. The real meaning of Merv’s utterance is illocutionary because the implicit meaning of

The situation of the perlocutionary act of those utterances can be concluded that the purpose of the speaker was not understood by the hearer, and naturally the intended perlocutionary act cannot appear. This situation certainly cannot achieve the illocutionary force that the speaker expected. In this conversation, after Merv uttered “Which I would prefer not to catch” Hilly as the hearer replies the speaker’s utterance by uttering “Meaning?”. In this case, the intention of the speaker absolutely did not understood by the hearer it can be seen from the perlocutionary act that the hearer performed after hearing the speaker utterance. By uttering the word “Meaning?” the hearer here wanted to know the purpose of the speaker by giving an oblivious utterances. In this conversation the intended perlocutionary act of the speaker did not occurred and it produce a different act which become the factual effect of the perlocutionry