A study of speech act of complaint in Synge’s one- act play "Riders to The Sea"

Abstract EN

People use various kinds of speech acts to suit the situation or circumstances in which they are.

One of these speech acts is complaining.

Complaint is one of the functions of expressive speech act.

Making a complaint means expressing displeasure, annoyance, or disapproval of something towards other people or situations that may affect the speaker improperly.

This paper has aimed at identifying the use of complaint speech act in the one- act play "Riders to the Sea" by the Irish playwright John Millington Synge.

The data of this research were collected via utterances that contain expressions of complaints spoken by the characters of the play; collected data were analyzed qualitatively according to a model of analysis proposed by Trosoborg.

This method of analysis focuses on describing and interpreting a particular phenomenon.

The results of the study showed that the characters of the play "Riders to the Sea" used expressive and declarative speech acts to express their complaints.

It was also found that the speakers in this play tended to use direct and indirect speech act to complain.