STRUCTURES AND FUNCTIONS OF COMMISSIVES BY US PRESIDENTS

Thus, it is especially interesting to study commissives as a speech act type.Surprising, no research of commissives has been conducted in Vietnamalthough there have been studies in speec

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I declare that this research paper is mine and original No other person‘s work has been used without acknowledgement in the thesis

Binh Dinh, 2019Signature

Xaiyavongkham Vongbouasy

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof Dr Nguyen Quang Ngoan for his support and guidance in mycompletion of the thesis

I am also thankful to all the lecturers at Quy Nhon University for theirprofound knowledge and endless support during my study at Quy NhonUniversity

I would also like to thank my classmates who are always willing to help

me and give their best suggestions and encouragement to me during myprocess of conducting the study

Finally, I owe the completion of this paper to my wife and children, whohave always been standing by me on my road to success

This MA thesis aims to study forms and structures of commissives by BillClinton, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump as the US presidents in theirterms The statistic, analytic, synthetic, descriptive, and comparativemethods are used to examine 331 commissives, collected from 48 speechesmade by the three presidents in their terms The results show that forms of

commissives are realized in structures with performative verbs, structures with commissive words, and structures without commissive words, among

which the last one is the most commonly used As far as functions areconcerned, commissives are used by the three presidents to express

offer/promise, threat/warning and refusal, with the first one being the most

frequently employed

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the rationale, aims and objectives of the study withits research questions, scope and significance The definitions of terms andstructures of the thesis are also presented

1.1 RATIONALE

When political leaders take a new position, they usually makecommitments to different things to make people happy or satisfied It is forthis reason that commissive speech acts are commonly made by politicalleaders Commissive speech acts or commissives are kinds of speech actsthat speakers use to commit themselves to doing something with words.Let‘s analyze the commissives in (1.1), (1.2), and (1.3)

(1.1) Let us guarantee every American comprehensive health benefits that

can never be taken away (September 22, 1993: Address on Health Care

Reform)

Example (1.1) is a commissive made by Former President Bill Clinton inhis address on health care reform on September 22nd, 1993 Structurally,this commissive is realized in a structure with the commissive word

guarantee Functionally, it is for making a promise to the audience.

(1.2) Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly $30 billion for the military this year, and I'll work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit (December 1,

2009: Speech on Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan)

In terms of structure, utterance (1.2) uttered by Former President BarackObama in his speech on strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan on December

1st, 2009 is realized, in the first part, in a structure with the commissive

word committed, and in the second part in a structure without commissive words: “I‟ll work” Both of them are, however, promises functionally.

(1.3) And we‘re pouring a lot of money and a lot of talent into this horrible

problem And we pledge to honor the memory of those you lost with action and determination and resolve We’ll get it We will not rest until the end.

(March 19, 2018: Remarks on Combating the Opioid Crisis)

Utterance (1.3) is a commissive made by President Donald Trump in hisremarks on combating the opioid crisis on March 19th, 2018 He uses both

the performative verb pledge and structures without commissive words

“We‟ll get it” and “We will not rest” for the promises he intends to make.

Thus, it is especially interesting to study commissives as a speech act type.Surprising, no research of commissives has been conducted in Vietnamalthough there have been studies in speech act types in textbooks (NguyễnThị Ngọc Dung, 2014; Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, 2014), indirect speech acts(Đoàn Thị Hương Hiền, 2015), expressives (Võ Trọng Nhơn, 2016),representatives (Nguyễn Xuân Vĩnh, 2013) and directives (Nguyễn ThịThanh Bình, 2011)

Thus, there has been no study on commissives in Vietnam with a focus onstructures and functions, especially by US presidents though they arefamous for using language to successfully communicate their intendedmeanings That means there are a literature gap and good reasons for my

choice of the research topic “Structure and Functions of Commissives by

US Presidents” for my MA thesis.

1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aim of the Study

This study aims to analyze the structures and functions of commissivesspeech acts made by US presidents in their terms to understand thembetter as a speech act type

1.2.2 Objectives of the Study

This research is intended to deal with the following objectives:

- To identify and analyze the structures of commissives made by the investigated US presidents in their terms

- To identify and analyze the functions of commissives made by the investigated US presidents in their terms

- To compare and contrast commissives made by the investigated US presidents in their terms

3. What are the similarities and differences in the commissives made

by the investigated US presidents in their terms?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The present study is limited to a small scale research to fulfill the

requirements for an MA thesis in English Linguistics

The linguistic features are limited to structures and functions ofcommissives The structures are divided into structures with performativeverbs, structures with commissive words, and structures withoutcommissive words The functions are further classified into offer/promise,threat/warning, and refusal.

Samples are commissives by US presidents in their terms They include

331 commissive speech acts collected from 48 political speeches made bythe investigated US presidents

The US presidents are limited to President Donald Trump, FormerPresident Barack Obama, and Former President Bill Clinton, the threelatest presidents of the USA

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study is expected to contribute a specific, thorough study ofcommissive speech acts and relevant issues in the genre of politicaldiscourse The results of this study are expected to help Vietnameselearners of English improve their understanding of structures andfunctions of speech acts to better their communication in English

1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS

- commissives/ commissive speech acts: kinds of speech acts thatspeakers use to commit themselves to doing something with words Theyexpress what the speaker intends Representatives of this group include

promising, offering, threatening, warning, refusing, vowing and volunteering They can be performed by the speaker alone, or by the speaker as a member of a group, e g “I‟ll be back”, “I‟m going to get it right next time”, “We will not do that”.

- performative verbs: a type of verbs (e.g., apologize, forbid, inform,

promise …) that can explicitly convey the kind of speech act being

performed

1.7 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS

The study consists of 5 chapters; each chapter takes responsibility for a particular function

- Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter reveals the overview of the study including the statement ofthe problem, research aim and objectives, research questions, scope of thestudy, significance of the study, and structure of the thesis

- Chapter 2: Literature review

In this chapter, all the terms as well as the key theoretical conceptsincluding the notion of speech act, degrees of speech act, types of speechacts and indirect speech acts that the present study is based on arethoroughly discussed Also, previous studies on speech act types andcommissives are reviewed

- Chapter 3: Research methodology

This chapter describes the research methods used in the study.Additionally, the research procedures, data sources and samples, data-analyzing methods and commissive triggers are also mentioned

- Chapter 4: Findings and discussion

This chapter depicts the results of the study that the researcher finds outfrom the collected data based on the three research questions and a detaileddiscussion on the research findings concerning structures and functionsused in the investigated commissives by US presidents

- Chapter 5: Conclusion

A summary of the study, major findings, implications, limitations as well

as suggestions for further studies are all mentioned in this final chapter.

1.8 SUMMARY

This chapter reveals all the major aspects introducing the study, such as rationale, research aim and objectives, research questions, research scope, and so on

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents a review of relevant theories and previous studiesrelevant studies to the research topic It deals with theories of speech acts,commissives as a speech act types, and previous studies of speech acttypes and commissives

2.1 THEORY OF SPEECH ACT

2.1.1 Notion of speech act

The study of speech acts was pioneered by Austin (1962) According tohim, all utterances should be viewed as actions of the speakers, actionsperformed by speech He pointed out that the declarative sentences are notonly used to say things or describe states of affairs but also used to dothings such as making requests or invitations Austin (1962) defined speechacts as the actions performed in saying something When people uttersomething, they often perform actions via those utterances These actions

are called speech acts such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise or request.

Yule (1997) defined that "in attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances" According to him, actions

performed via utterances are speech acts

To a certain extent, both well-known linguists agreed that speech acts areactions intended to do by a speaker through utterances he performs in

conversations with others.

Speech act have also been studied by a number of researchers, such asSearle (1969, 1975, 1976), Bach and Harnish (1979), House & Kasper(1987), (Faerch & Kasper (1989), Richards et al (1992), and Geis (1995),among others

2.1.2 Degrees of speech act

As initially classified by Austin (1962), supported and followed by Searle(1969), Richards et al (1992), Geis (1995) and Yule (1997), a speech act

consists of three related acts including locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.

Locutionary act is the basic act of producing a meaningful linguistic

expression The locutionary act is performed with some purposes orfunctions in mind When you utter something meaningful in a language,you perform a locutionary act

Illocutionary act is an act performed via the communicative force of an

utterance Hurford et al (2007) also stated that one way to think about the

illocutionary act is that it reflects the intention of the speaker in making

utterance in the first place Likewise, Yule (1997) stated that we might utter

to make a statement, an offer, an explanation, or for some othercommunicative purposes To put it simple, illocutionary act is thespeaker‘s intended meaning when he utters something

Perlocutionary act is what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading or deterring Perlocutionary acts are

performed only on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effectthe speaker intended Perlocutionnary acts are what the speaker cannotcontrol like what he can do with the other two acts

For example, when making the utterance ―Can you tell me where the

rector‟s office is?” the speaker makes a loccutionary act By that locutionary act, he wants to make his illocutionary act which is a polite request For the perlocutionary act, the speaker may get the addressee to

show him the way

Of the three levels, it is the illocutionary act that counts because it conveys

the speaker‘s intended meaning (illocutionary force) which can be realized

in different language structures of various semantic meanings That helps

to partially explain why Yule (1997: 52) claims, “„speech act‟ is generally interpreted quite narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force

of an utterance”.

2.1.3 Classification of speech acts

One general classification system lists five types of general functionsperformed by speech acts - declarations, representatives, expressives,directives, and commissives (Searle 1976: 1-15, Levinson 1983: 240)

• Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via

their utterance and via words They effect immediate changes in the

institutional state of affairs and tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguisticinstitutions (declaring war, firing from employment) (Levinson 1983: 240).The given examples below illustrate that the speaker has to have a specialinstitutional role, in a specific context, in order to perform a declarationappropriately For example,

- US president: I now declare war to China.

- Football referee: You‟re out!

• Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the

speaker believes to be the state or not Statements of fact, assertions,conclusions, and descriptions are all examples of the speaker representing

the world as he or she believes it is Typical functions of this category are

describing, claiming, hypothesizing, insisting and disagreeing The

following examples illustrate what are mentioned above For example,

- It is Sunday today.

- They are learning English now.

• Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit

themselves to doing something with words They express what the speaker

intends Representatives of this group include promising, offering,

threatening, refusing, vowing, pledging, committing, and volunteering.

They can be performed by the speaker alone, or by the speaker as amember of a group For instance,

- I‘ll help you to do that

- We will no longer accept that

• Directives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to get

someone else to do something They express what the speaker wants

Typical functions of this group are commanding, ordering, requesting, suggesting, inviting, advising, and questioning They can be positive or

negative, as illustrated in these examples:

- Stop making noise, mate.

- Don‟t touch your nose.

• Expressives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker

feels They express psychological states and can be statements of pleasure,

pain, likes, dislikes, joy or sorrow, complimenting, congratulating, thanking, welcoming As illustrated in the examples below, they can be

caused by something the speaker does or the hearer does, but they are

about the speaker‘s experience.

- I‟m so excited.

- Good job!

This above classification is viewed as one of the most influential and auniversal taxonomy of speech acts

2.1.4 Indirect speech acts

a Definition of indirect speech acts

In the theory of speech acts, Searle (1976) introduced the notion of

―indirect speech act”, which in his account is meant to be an indirect

―illocutionary act” He stated: "In indirect speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying

on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference

on the part of the hearer".

Speech acts may be either direct or indirect speech acts depending on the

direct and indirect relationships between their structures and functions.Discussing the perspective of direct and indirect speech act, Searle (1975)stated that the simplest cases of meaning are those in which the speakerutters a sentence and means exactly and literally what he says and definedindirect speech acts as cases where an illocutionary act is performedindirectly by way of performing another

More simply, direct speech acts occur when the speaker says what he means,while in indirect speech acts, the speaker means more than what is

communicated Yule (1997) suggested the three structural forms (declarative,

interrogative and imperative) and the three corresponding communicative

functions (statement, question and command/request) to classify speech acts

as being direct or indirect He stated: ―Wherever there

is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have direct speech act Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have an indirect speech act‖.

To make a direct speech act, there has to be a direct relationship between a

structure and a function For example, the utterance ―He is an English student‖ is a declarative sentence If the speaker wants to make a statement

with that structure, it is direct However, if that is the answer to the request

“Could anyone translate this instruction into English?”, it is an indirect command/request, with the speaker‘s intention being “Tell him to do that”.

b Characteristics of indirect speech acts

The relationship between structure and function is the criterion todetermine indirect speech acts As Yule (1997) argued, whenever there is

an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have anindirect speech act and the secondary meaning derived from indirectspeech acts requires the participation from both the speaker and the hearer

In Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Dung‘s (2014: 29) study, she clarified Yule‘s (1997)point of view by suggesting specific cases of indirect speech acts, asshown in Table 2.1

Table 2.1: Analysis of indirect speech acts +Sstructure

In indirect speech acts , the form differs from the function Usually in thesecases, the indirect speech acts carries meaning in the utterance, but theintended force in the speech act has a secondary meaning also As Searle

(1975) stated, ―the speaker utters a sentence, means what he says, but also means something more‖ The classic example ―Can you pass the salt?” is clearly a case for indirect speech acts The literal meaning of this

utterance refers to the ability of the hearer to pass the salt physically, whilethe intended meaning or perlocutionary effect of the utterance is for thehearer to pass the salt Searle (1975) described the indirect speech acts as

―cases where one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another‖.

As Saville-Troike (1982: 36) stated, ―direct acts are those where surface form matches interactional function‖, it can be drawn that indirect speech

acts are those whose surface form does not match interactional function.Nevertheless, sometimes the structure matches the function well but it is

not a direct speech act but an indirect one For example, when being asked

―Do you have a house?‖ one can answer by saying ―I live with my aunt‖ The response should be interpreted as ―I don‟t have a house‖, so it is

viewed as an indirect speech act rather than a direct one, though thestructure matches its function

In Clark (1979, cited in Đoàn Thị Hương Hiền, 2015: 17-18), six properties

of indirect speech acts based on the work of many researchers arediscussed as follows:

- Indirect speech acts have multiple meanings There are literal and implied meanings

- Indirect speech acts follow logical priority of meanings Sincemultiple meanings are available in the utterance, the most logical andsalient one will be selected based on the given context

- Indirect speech acts are rational Based on the principles ofcooperativeness in Grice (1975), speakers and hearers assume that theutterances are rational and according to the maxims set for conversation

- Indirect speech acts have conventionality Speakers tend to speakidiomatically rather than directly This idiomatic usage has become

conventional, so in ―Can you reach the salt?” the ability is not

questioned, but rather serves as an indirect speech act for passing the salt

- Indirect speech acts are polite Indirectness is a widely usedconversational strategy People tend to use indirect speech acts mainly inconnection with politeness because sometimes direct addresses may even

appear impolite as in ‗Would you lend me some money?‘ and ‗Lend me some money!‘ The latter variant would be absolutely unacceptable in some

contexts

- Indirect speech acts are purposeful Based on the notion oflinguistic politeness, the indirect speech acts are used to fulfill a certainsocietal norm of indirectness and serve the purpose for meeting the

speaker‘s intentions

To sum up, the review of indirect speech acts help the researcherunderstand explicit/implicit or direct/indirect commissives better

2.1.5 Role of context in speech act studies

When one analyzes speech acts and their role in conversations, he/she isaware of the significance of context The same utterance can be employed

to express different illocutionary acts in different contexts Therefore,context must be carefully considered whenever speech acts are interpreted

Yule (1997) suggested that context refers to the physical environment of a

speech event and it includes the participants, location, time, and otherphysical aspects The linguistic material concerning the linguistic partspreceding and/or following an analyzed utterance is, as stated by Yule,

called co-text However, as it was claimed by Thomas (1996), context

could be analyzed in three levels: the socio-cultural background, thephysical environment and the linguistic parts surrounding an utterancebeing investigated

Whenever a speech act is analyzed, it is highly important to put it in itscontext for the persuasive interpretation of the speaker‘s meaning That iswhy in my study, I provide the necessary contextual clues of the speakers,locations, times, and topics of the political speeches under investigation

2.2 PREVIOUS RELEVANT STUDIES

Previous studies relevant to the researcher‘s present research include

those concerning speech acts and commissives These have been studied

by a few researchers both in Vietnam and throughout the world.

As an overview, Nguyễn Quang Ngoạn‘s (2017) study aims atinvestigating studies of speech acts having been conducted for the MADegree in English Language at the typical institutions where the major hasbeen trained in the period of five years, from 2011 to 2015 Purposes are,

on the one hand, to examine the MA theses in English on speech actsconcerning research trends, data types, and theoretical frameworks in theinvestigated MA theses and, on the other hand, to suggest new trends andtopics for speech act studies to meet the demand of MA students ofEnglish The study was approached both quantitatively and qualitatively.The quantitative approach was opted for to work out the quantitativeaspects of the data realized in the percentage of each category of the MAtheses investigated, while the qualitative approach was chosen for the help

in further interpretation and discussion in detail of the characteristics ofeach category A combination of different methods for data analysis,including analytic, synthetic, descriptive, and contrastive was applied Onemajor conclusion is that when the research trends are concerned, thefindings were that the number of theses conducted with single speech actswas equal to the ones on speech act groups The most common researchtopics were on complaining, refusing, requesting and apologizing Studies

on speech act groups were marked with studies of directives, responses todirectives, representatives, and speech act types with the samples beingadjacency pairs, announcements, gossips, interviews, and telephoneconversations The findings showed that many other sing speech acts werenot studies So were speech act groups such as commissives andexpressives English-Vietnamese contrastive studies proved to bepredominant, while interlanguage studies were limited

Nguyễn Quang Ngoạn & Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Dung (2017) studied speech

acts in the conversations of New Interchange 1, 2, and 3 The aim of thestudy was to examine speech act types in the conversations investigated.Both the quantitative approach and qualitative approach were employedwith the assistance of descriptive, contrastive, analytic, and syntheticmethods to help work out the best possible findings The data consisted of

a total of 784 turns comprising 8126 words in 97 conversations of NewInterchange 1, 2, and 3 The results showed interesting speech act types To

be more specific, although there was a strong tendency for combination ofdifferent speech act types, single speech act groups were preferred with thepredominance of representatives

Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Dung‘s (2014) study of speech acts in the conversations

of the New Interchange series presented a more detailed description ofspeech act types in the series She also focused on indirect speech acts Sheconcluded that indirect speech acts, just accounted for approximately 20%,reflecting the linear communication style of English speakers

Also related to textbooks, Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm‘s (2014) study examinedspeech acts realized in conversations in the current high school Englishtextbooks in Vietnam, with a focus on types, structures, and functions ofthe speech acts realized in the investigated conversations Based on thetheory of speech acts, 281 speech acts collected from the conversations inthe high school English textbooks were investigated Also, a comparisonbetween the conversations in the high school English textbooks and those

in two volumes of Solutions, an authentic material written by nativespeakers, was carried out to find out the similarities and differencesbetween them Descriptive and contrastive methods were used in the study

It was found that representatives, directives, commissives and expressivesoccurring in the studied conversations carried 8 language functions andcould be realized in various structures and clause patterns Additionally,

despite having some features in common, the conversations in the twosources of data were different in the frequency of occurrence of eachspeech act type and function.

In terms indirect speech acts, Đoàn Thị Hương Hiền (2015) examined theconversations of modern short stories in English and Vietnamese in terms

of structures and functions The data consisted of 300 samples taken fromvarious English and Vietnamese modern short stories Descriptive,contrastive, analytic and synthetic methods were employed The studyrevealed interesting results concerning indirect speech act structures,indirect speech act functions as well as major similarities and differences instructures and functions of the investigated speech acts between Englishand Vietnamese Specifically, declaratives for command/ request showedthe predominant frequency in English while interrogatives for exclamationwere preferred in Vietnamese

When it comes to speech act groups, Võ Trọng Nhơn‘s (2018) study wasmainly carried out with the aims of investigating various linguistic features

of expressives in comments given by judges in America‘s Got Talentversus Vietnam‘s Got Talent from structure as well as functionperspectives In order to conduct this study, the researcher merely focused

on one season of each nation which was America‘s Got Talent season 9with 50 given commentary turns containing expressives and Vietnam‘s GotTalent season 3 with 50 given commentary turns containing expressives.Both of these seasons took place in 2014 To take a closer look, theresearcher analyzed linguistic features of expressive speech acts in

comments in both structures and functions The results showed that in

general, there are 337 cases found in the whole data in which 244 items,staying at 72.4%, came from single expressive speech act functions and therest of that (93 ones) holding a rate of 27.6%, were born

in combined expressive speech act functions.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình‘s (2011) investigated linguistic features ofdirectives in school announcements in English This research was carriedout in contrastive analysis of the syntactic and pragmatic features ofindirect interrogative directives in English and Vietnamese speech events,which focused mainly on verbal communication through the analysis of thedata collected from the conversations, books, novels, short stories, …inboth English and Vietnamese The results showed that the illocutionaryforce of indirect interrogative directives in English and Vietnamese could

be indicated by any clause types; the formation of indirect directives couldcontain vocatives, polite markers in forms of polite expressions, mitigatingdevices and hedges as non-propositional components; and the Englishshowed consideration to the hearer‘s negative face with the preference onthe indirect way of giving directives, whereas the Vietnamese displayed thecare for the hearer‘s positive face with the preference on the direct way ofgiving directives

Nguyễn Xuân Vĩnh‘s (2013) examined the teachers‘ representatives withdefining functions in lectures in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmaticfeatures He focused on such issues of syntax like clausal structures of therepresentative utterances in view of Functional grammar whereby thesyntactic functions of lexical items used in teachers‘ representatives withdefining functions were examined in clause as message and clause ofmaterial The study looked into issues of semantics like the semanticfunctions of the components of an act of defining It also explored theattitudinal meaning of the modal markers used in teachers‘ representativeswith defining functions The sampling was made with the searching forinstances of teachers‘ representatives with defining functions of a widerange of linguistic structures in lecture discourses 200 examples were

collected from different sources of lectures both in form of text in paper and

in form of electronic texts on the internet as well The results showed that,syntactically a typical definition could be structurally realized in the clause asmessage and clause as representation where such linguistic structures asnominal group could assume the position of a Theme and a Rheme in theclause The Theme was realized with a nominal group functioning as Subjectdenoting the entity to be defined and this was a starting point to develop adefinition This Rheme could be syntactically realized with the otherstructural units such as adjectival group, verbal group plus a complementsignaled by a nominal group Pragmatically, apart from the typical function of

a representative speech act of defining in reflecting the ideational orexperiential meaning about the scientific knowledge or external world, thisact of defining could be modified with some expressions functioning ashedges to facilitate the speaker‘s explanation of the key term and theaudience‘s comprehension of the definition This could be achieved with theinternal modification and external modification of the act of defining

More closely related to the present study, Miftakhul Ulum et al.‘s (2018)study aimed to compare Trump‘s and Clinton‘s commissive speech actswhich included its types and functions Descriptive qualitative method wasapplied in this study The data were analyzed by using commissive speechact instrument adapted from Searle and Vandervecken The result showedthat there were six types of commissive speech acts used by Trump Theywere promising, threatening, pledging, offering, refusing, and assuring, thefunctions of which were to give solution, to insult, to show care, tothreaten, to encourage, and to convince Meanwhile, Clinton only used twotypes of commissives: promise and assure These types had the functions togive solution, to show care, and to convince Regarding their similarities, itwas found that both of them used two similar commissives: promising andassuring In addition, promising became the most dominant

type found They also used these speech acts to give solution, show care,and convince the audience Meanwhile, as for the differences, it was foundthat Trump used more types of commissive speech acts rather than Clintondid They were threatening, pledging, offering, and refusing Trump alsoused more functions of his commissive speech acts that were asthreatening, insulting, and encouraging.

Bushia Ni‘ma Rashid (2015) analyzed specific commissive acts (promise,threat, guarantee and pledge) in some selected American political speeches

of four American presidents: George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bushand Barack Obama This study dealt with the problem of applying thespeech acts theory in political speeches It also attempted to reveal theoverlapping of these acts in political speeches In order to suit theobjectives of the work, this study attempted to modify Searle's FelicityConditions and semantic rules of promise for the acts of threatening,guaranteeing and pledging by extracting some semantic rules for theSpeech Act of threatening, guaranteeing and pledging and taking intoaccount the general framework that was proposed by Searle This studyalso proposed a specific classification for these acts, in order to overcomethe overlapping and ambiguity

Khalimatul Mauludiyah‘s (2015) study focused on commissive speech actsuttered in You Tube in Donald Trump‘s campaign speech in the State ofUSS, York Town when he stated that he would forbid Muslims fromentering the United States The writer used qualitative research methods inwhich he kept a focus on interpreting the meaning the speaker intended tosay about the problem or issue The researcher listened to the content of thespeech and then observed and paid attention to the details to understand thewhole sentence in context The results of the study showed that thecommissive illocutionary acts divided into commit, promise, assure,

threaten, refuse, guarantee, and bet were uttered indirectly.

To sum up, the process of reviewing the literature helped the researcher agreat deal in working out the theoretical framework for the study as well asdetermining the literature gap for his research to be conducted To be morespecific, no studies of commissives have been found in Vietnam In theworld, there have been some studies of commissives in political speeches,especially by US presidents However, none of them have compared andcontrasted commissives by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and DonaldTrump What is more, none of the studied has focused on structures ofcommissives, leaving the literature gap for the present study

2.3 SUMMARY

This chapter has, so far, reviewed the speech act theory with relevant issues

as well as previous studies to set up a solid background and find out theliterature gap for the present study

CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Chapter three presents the research methodology of the study First, itreveals the research methods and research procedures employed in thestudy Then, it describes the data collection and data analysis before theclaims for validity and reliability are made

3.1 RESEARCH METHODS

The research was approached mainly qualitatively, with the support ofcertain quantitative data Quantitatively, statistics of the frequency ofoccurrence of structure types and functions of commissives in thespeeches by the US presidents under investigation is done Qualitatively,specific characteristics of commissive structures and functions wereintroduced and interpreted with the researcher‘s interpretation anddiscussion

Research methods employed in the research included the analytic,synthetic, statistic, descriptive, and comparative methods These methodswere employed in combination as follows:

- The analytic method was used to analyze and classify the forms andstructures of commissives

- The synthetic method was to help the researcher synthesize the findings and draw out conclusions in the final process of the research

- The statistic method was used to work out the quantitative data forexamining the frequency of occurrence of forms and structures of theinvestigated commissives

- The descriptive method helped to describe the main linguistic features of the forms and structures of the investigated commissives.

- The comparative method was used to compare and contrast thesimilarities and differences in commissives used by different USpresidents

After that, the research samples were prepared for the study The researchercollected 48 speeches made in their terms by Bill Clinton, Barack Obamaand Donald Trump

Then, the commissive triggers were prepared for the selection of samples

As a result, 331 samples of commissive were gathered

Next, the researcher conducted the analysis of the selected samplesaccording to structures and functions

Finally, based on the results of the analysis, the researcher synthesized thefindings, tabularized them, interpreted and discussed them before drawingout conclusions and making implications

3.3 DATA SOURCES AND SAMPLES

As stated, the sources for the research data were the 46 speeches made intheir terms by the three US presidents: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama andDonald Trump, with an equal number of 16 speeches from each Thenames of each speech together with its speaker and time is listed below:

SPEECHES BY BILL CLINTON

1. April 30, 1993: National Service Address

2. May 5, 1993: Remarks on Operation Restore Hope

3. September 13, 1993: Remarks at the Signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Agreement

4. September 22, 1993: Address on Health Care Reform

5. October 7, 1993: Address on Somalia

6. November 13, 1993: Remarks to the Convocation of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis

7. December 8, 1993: Remarks on the Signing of NAFTA

8. June 6, 1994: Remarks at the U.S National Cemetery

9. January 25, 1994: State of the Union Address

10. July 12, 1994: Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate

11. October 16, 1995: Address on Race Relations

12. November 30, 1995: Address to the Employees of the Mackie Metal Plant

13. November 27, 1995: Address on Bosnia

14. June 25, 1996: Victims Rights Announcement

15. August 29, 1996: Remarks at the Democratic National Convention

16. January 27, 2000: State of the Union Address

SPEECHES BY BARRACK OBAMA

1. February 7, 2009: Remarks on the American Recovery and

Reinvestment Act

2. September 9, 2009: Address to Congress on Health Care

3. December 1, 2009: Speech on Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

4. January 27, 2010: 2010 State of the Union Address

5. March 15, 2010: Speech on Health Care Reform

6. April 15, 2010: Remarks on Space Exploration in the 21st Century

7. April 28, 2010: Remarks on Wall Street Reform

8. August 31, 2010: Address on the End of the Combat Mission in Iraq

9. September 23, 2010: Address to the United Nations

10. January 25, 2011: 2011 State of the Union Address

11. May 19, 2011: Speech on American Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa

12. November 20, 2014: Address to the Nation on Immigration

13. March 22, 2016: Remarks to the People of Cuba

14. February 13, 2013: 2013 State of the Union Address

15. July 24, 2013: Remarks on Education and the Economy

16. March 21, 2013: Address to the People of Israel

SPEECHES BY DONAL TRUMPH

1. January 20, 2017: Inaugural Address

2. February 28, 2017: Address to Joint Session of Congress

3. June 29, 2017: Speech at the Unleashing American Energy Event

4. July 24, 2017: Speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree

5. September 19, 2017: Address to the United Nations General Assembly

6. December 18, 2017: Remarks on National Security Strategy

7. January 26, 2018: Address at the World Economic Forum

8. January 30, 2018: State of the Union Address

9. February 1, 2018: Remarks at the House and Senate Republican

13. July 24, 2018: Speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National

Convention

14. September 25, 2018: Address at the 73rd Session of the United NationsGeneral Assembly

15. January 19, 2019: Remarks about the US Southern Border

16. February 5, 2019: State of the Union Address

From the data sources, the sampling was worked out The triggerspresented in Table 3.1 were prepared for the selection of raw samples.Then, based on the characteristics of commissives, 331 samples werefinally chosen for the study

Table 3.1 Commissive triggers for sample collection

As shown in Table 3.2, it is Donald Trump who contributes the biggestnumber, up to 149 commissives, taking 45.02%, almost a half It wasfollowed by Barrack Obama, at 34.44% (114 samples) and Bill Clinton, atonly 20.54% (68 samples)

Table 3.2 Total of commissives as samples in the study

By Bill Clinton

N

68

Following are some typical samples of commissives from the collected data

(3.1) Let us guarantee every American comprehensive health benefits

that can never be taken away (Bill Clinton, September 22, 1993:Address on Health Care Reform)

(3.2) I refuse to send American troops to fight a war in Bosnia, but I

believe we must help to secure the Bosnian peace (Bill Clinton,November 27, 1995: Address on Bosnia)

(3.3) We will help Egypt regain access to markets by guaranteeing $1

billion in borrowing that is needed to finance infrastructure and jobcreation (Barack Obama, May 19, 2011: Speech on AmericanDiplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa)

(3.4) It should also serve as a message to the world that the United States

of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this

young century (Barack Obama, August 31, 2010: Address on the End

of the Combat Mission in Iraq)

(3.5) And we‘re pouring a lot of money and a lot of talent into this horrible

problem And we pledge to honor the memory of those you lost with

action and determination and resolve We’ll get it We will not rest until the end (Donald Trump, March 19, 2018: Remarks on Combating the

The complete sampling of 331 commissives by the three presidents,divided into different structures and functions is presented in the Appendix

3.4 DATA ANALYSIS

As previously presented, the analytic, synthetic, statistic, descriptive, andcomparative methods were all employed to examine the data fromdifferent angles, based on Searle‘s (1976) and Yule‘s (1996) theory

3.5 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY

The reliability of the data can be ensured with the 331 commissives exactlycollected from 48 speeches made by the three US presidents on a reliablewebsite, namely: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches The lengths of the speeches range from 1000 to 5000 words.The examples illustrating the categories and findings in the study areexactly the same as those in the original speeches

The validity of data analysis is strengthened with detailed analyticalframeworks built up from Searle‘s (1976) and Yule‘s (1996) theory, whichhave been widely accepted Specifically, Searle‘s (1976) classification ofspeech acts into five types, among which commissives as a speech acttype with all its sub-types or functions introduced by Searle

(1976) and added by his followers were employed Yule‘s (1996)discussion on performative verbs and the performative hypothesis wasalso applied to analyzing structures of commissives.

All the statistics has been conducted exactly with the help of computer.For each category under investigations, relevant examples from the dataare used for illustration and can be checked in the appendix

3.6 SUMMARY

This chapter has revealed the research design for the present study with adescription of research methods, research procedures, data sources andsamples, and data analysis

CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the findings of the study with relevant commentsand examples It starts with the structures of commissives, and thencontinues with functions of commissives in speeches made in their terms

by three US Presidents: Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump

4.1 STRUCTURES OF COMMISSIVES IN SPEECHES BY US

Table 4.1 shows that in the examined data, in terms of structure, two thirds

of the commissives are made with structures without commissive words,accounting for 69.79%, with 231 out of 331 items They are followed bystructures with commissive words at 22.96% (76 items) and structures withperformative verbs at 7.25% (24 items)