Pragmatic Analysis Of Illocutionary Forces For The2008"CCTV Cup" English Speaking Contest

The "CCTV Cup" English Speaking Contest, as one of public speech contests,plays a great role in perfecting the practical competence of speakers, especiallycollege students. Some of the speeches are known as the representative masterpiecesof English Speaking Contest and they also tend to be the promotion of Englisheducation and the international cultural communication. Therefore, the study of"CCTV Cup" English Speaking Contest is an increasingly heated topic. The "CCTVCup" English Speaking Contest is an authoritative contest with the same purpose asthose of other public speeches, to influence the general public and share some ideawith the public. Through their speeches, the contestants wish to gain the support fromtheir audiences and win the recognition from their judges. The persuasion of thepeople concerned is the final purpose. For these purposes, a range of speech-makingstrategies are put to use.In the light of Austin and Searle’s speech act theory, this paper aims to analyzehow they fulfill the mission of persuasion of the public audience and how theintentions of contestants are achieved through a variety of language devices such aslexical expressions, syntactic devices and rhetorical devices which bear variouspragmatic functions of the illocutionary forces.From the analysis of the speeches by23contestants, this thesis draws aconclusion that the illocutionary forces which carry the intention of the speaker couldbe realized through pronoun "we", modal auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, questions,"Ibelieve/think/know that..." types of sentences, imperative sentences, metaphor,parallelism and repetition. In addition, the pragmatic functions of arousing attentionand interest, highlighting the theme, delivering a sense of intimacy, earning theaudience’s trust, pathetic appealing, motivating and persuading, promise-making and proposal of obligations are all concluded.On the one hand, this thesis makes a great contribution to the study of speech acttheory. On the other hand, it brings forth the speaking skills to college students andhelp the audience understand the contest better. It is also a good way to give publicspeakers and the would-be contestants some enlightenment on how to deliver asuccessful speech by adopting a variety of speech acts.