SPEECH ACT ANALYSIS OF FEMALE STUDENT LEADERS IN A MALAYSIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL

Sharifah Syakila Syed Shaharuddin, Minah Harun

Abstract


The speech act is a study of pragmatics whereby utterances serve an essential function beyond verbal communication. It is an act of performing some activity through spoken words. In leadership, speech acts play a crucial role in the interaction between leaders and their followers. It not only conveys information but also initiates a desirable action or behaviour among the followers. Thus, leaders must be capable of utilizing different speech acts effectively to influence their followers to act or behave in a specific way and accomplish their leadership goals. This study has been undertaken in response to previous researchers who have found significant differences in speech acts of male and female leaders, with an objective to analyze the speech acts of female student leaders in a Malaysian secondary school according to Theory of Speech Acts by Bach & Harnish (1979). We collected data through in-depth interviews with three research participants who had been selected via purposive sampling. These participants were female students aged 17 years old with at least four years of leadership experience. After an in-depth qualitative analysis of interview data, we have demonstrated that speech acts of the research participants varied among constative, directive, commissive. Constatives, informative, assertive, and predictive acts. Among them, informative, assertive, and predictive speech acts dominated their utterances. In conclusion, the participants' speech acts indicated that, in general, they wished to be persuasive in their leadership roles and responsibilities.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


speech acts, female student leaders, in-depth interviews, secondary school

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ahmad Kamil, M., & Shamshul Bahrn, F. (2020). A Speech Act Analysis of the Prime Minister's Speech Pertaining to the Movement Control Order (MCO) to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia. International Journal of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, 4(4), 1-13

Altikriti, S. (2016). Persuasive speech acts in Barrack Obama's Inaugural Speeches (2009, 2013) and The Last State of the Union Address (2016). International Journal of Linguistics, 8(2), 47-66.

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Clavendon Press

Austin, J. L. (2009). Soylemek ve yapmak. (R. Levent Aysever, Trans.). Istanbul: Metis

Bach, K., & Harnish, R. (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Birner B. J. (2013). Introduction to pragmatics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Chamani, F. (2014). Gender Differences in the Use of Apology Speech Act in Persian International Journal of Linguistics, 6(6), 47-63

Che Ismail, N. A. binti. (2018). Politeness Strategies and Gender Differences in the Speech Act of Rejection among the Malays in Malaysia. SALTeL Journal (Southeast Asia Language Teaching and Learning), 1(1), 1–7

Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003). Language and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Glass, C., & Cook, A. (2016). Leading at the top: Understanding women's challenges above the glass ceiling. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(1), 51–63.

Goethals, G. R., & Crystal, L. H. (Eds.). (2017). Women and Leadership: History, Theories, and Case Studies. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Group LLC

Hafifah, M. (2020) Constative and Performative Utterances in Jokowi's Speeches. Wahana Inovasi 9(1), 85-97

Hanna, N., & Richards, D. (2019). Speech act theory as an evaluation tool for human–agent communication. Algorithms, 12(79), 2-17

Hoogeboom, A. M. G. M., & Wilderom, C. P. M. (2015). Effective leader behaviors in regularly held staff meetings: Surveyed vs. video-taped and –coded observations. In J. Allen, N. Lehmann-Willenbrock, & S. G. Rogelberg (Eds.), The science of meetings New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. (pp. 381–412).

Kechot, A. S. (2015). Bentuk komunikasi dalam menangani peranan kepimpinan badan bukan kerajaan (NGO) perfileman. Malaysian Journal of Communication, 31(2), 423-439

Krishnan, I. A., Mello, G. De, Nalini Arumugam, P. C. S., Paramasivam, S., & Ibrahim, M. N. A. (2021). A Comparative Study of Speech Acts Between Malaysia and Singapore on the First MCO Announcements of Covid-19. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(8), 992-1008

Marquez, R. R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay; A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Merchant, K. (2012). How Men and Women Differ: Gender Differences in Communication Styles, Influence Tactics, and Leadership Styles. CMC Senior Theses. Paper 513

Moran, B. B. (1992). Gender differences in leadership. Library Trends, 40(3)

Radu, Catalina & Deaconu, Alecxsndrina & Frasineanu, Corina. (2017). Leadership and Gender Differences—Are Men and Women Leading in the Same Way?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313263555_Leadership_and_Gender_Differences-Are_Men_and_Women_Leading_in_the_Same_Way

Ramanathan, R., Paramasivam, S. & Hoon, T.B. (2020). Discursive Strategies and Speech Acts in Political Discourse of Najib and Modi. Shanlax International Journal of Education, 8(3), 34–44.

Rivai, M. (2015). Speech Variations of Male and Female Students: The Case of German Language Education Program, State University of Makassar. Aust. J. Basic & Appl. Sci., 9(31), 582-587

Safwat, S. (2015). Speech Acts in Political Speeches. Journal of Modern Education Review. 5, 699-706

Shanmugam, M., Amaratunga, R.D.G. & Haigh, R.P. (2007). Leadership styles: gender similarities, differences and perceptions. Proceedings of 7th International Postgraduate Research Conference in the Built and Human Environment, Salford Quays, UK.

Sharqawi, M. & Anthony, E. M. (2020). Analysing Gender Effect on the Speech Act of Suggestion: A Pilot Study. Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. 9, 62-76

Athanasopoulou, A., Moss‐Cowan, A., Smets, M., & Morris, T. (2018). Claiming the corner office: Female CEO careers and implications for leadership development. Human Resource Management, 57(2), 617-639.

Park, S., & Liang, J. (2021). A comparative study of gender representation and social outcomes: The effect of political and bureaucratic representation. Public Administration Review, 81(2), 321-332.

Piaw, C. Y., & Ting, L. L. (2014). Are school leaders born or made? Examining factors of leadership styles of Malaysian school leaders. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 5120-5124.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v9i7.4379

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2022 Sharifah Syakila Syed Shaharuddin, Minah Harun

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright © 2015-2023. European Journal of Education Studies (ISSN 2501 - 1111) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library (Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei). All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All authors who send their manuscripts to this journal and whose articles are published on this journal retain full copyright of their articles. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).