Pragmatic analysis of speech act theories in Ola Rotimi’s “our husband has gone mad again”

Abstract

This work focused on the Pragmatic Analysis of Speech Act theory in Ola Rotimi’s “Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again”.  Some selected dialogue from the drama text under study were used as samples and analyzed using J.L. Austin’s (1962) Speech Acts Theory.  Speech act is central to pragmatics.  It is concerned with specific social acts performed in making utterances.  Speech act is credited to J.L. Austin in the views he expounded in the series of William James lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1955.  The book was published and entitled “How to Do Things With Words”. Speech act is concerned with what interlocutors within a given discourse situation do with words as we can see in the dialogues within the drama text under study. Austin developed three speech acts which include the locutionary act, the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act.  Searle (1975) holds that we use language for a number of things; we tell people how things are, we try to get them to do things, we commit ourselves to doing things, we express our feelings and attitudes and bring about changes in behaviour with utterances. The researcher used speech act theory to analyse selected dialogues in the drama text.  Based on the findings, the researcher made the following recommendations; Teachers should create awareness on the teaching and learning of speech act theory.  Students should be motivated to develop interest in speech acts, curriculum planners should include speech act theory in the curriculum and government should provide textbooks on speech act theory to students.