A Study Of Commissive Verbs In Friends From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Analysis

Speech act theory is a very important theory of pragmatics. It was originallyproposed by the British philosopher John Austin in the1950s. According to speech acttheory, when we utter a sentence, we also perform a certain act at the same time.Based on this theory, the speaker may perform three kinds of behaviors at the sametime: locutionary act, illocutionary act, perlocutionary act. Speech act verb is a meansto express the speech act. Many linguists have focused on the studies on the speechact verbs. Some scholars have discussed in different extents.This paper aims to provide a new angle of speech act verb study to researchers,and to broaden the scope of the study of speech act verbs. It also can broaden thescopes of application of speech act theory and speech act verbs.The research object of this paper is the speech act of promising. It is differentfrom the previous research which the object of research is merely the speech act verbs.The author hopes this paper could have some inspiration on domestic study on speechact verbs. Through the pragmatic analysis of the speech act verb of promising, it canbe understood the usage of the speech act verb of promising in the dailycommunication from different angles.In this paper, speech act verb of promising has been selected from Friends.Through the statistic and analysis on the speech act verb of promising in Friends, theauthor has found out the usage of speech act verb of promising in different contextsand revealed the causes.Chapter one is an introduction. The author introduces the basic problems of thispaper, involving the background of the research, research questions and the overallstructure of this paper.Chapter two is the theoretical origin of speech act verb of promising. It aims to provide the theoretical support on this study.Chapter three introduces the research method, the data collection and the datasource of this paper. Since the speech act verb of promising occupies the large portionin the spoken English. Friends has been selected as the data source. There aredialogues in Friends which are easy to understand. It lays a good foundation for thisstudy.Chapter four is the main part. Based on the analysis of Friends, this paper hasdiscussed the research question in details. Through the case study, we can find out thereason that leads to the changes of speech act verb of promising in the process oflanguage use.Chapter five is the conclusion. Firstly, it summarizes this study and discusses thetheoretical value of this study. After that, it points out the theoretical and practicallimitation of this study. At last, developing trend has been indicated for futureresearch.