SPEECH ACTS USED BY FOUR-YEAR-OLD JAVANESE CHILDREN

This study investigates the speech acts used by four-year-old Javanese children. The objectives of the study are to describe the types of speech acts occurring in children’s conversation with different addressees, i.e. parents, siblings and peers, the way the children produce the speech acts, and the reasons of the occurrence of the speech acts. This research was conducted by qualitative content analysis method. The data were obtained from the observation and the transcription of the recorded children’s conversation with their parents, siblings and peers. The findings showed that four out of five types of speech acts occurred in the children’s utterances with all addressees, they are representative, directive, commissive and expressive. Declarative speech acts did not occur in all conversation with all addressees. The speech acts were realized in two ways, namely directly and indirectly. The reasons of the occurrences of the speech acts were answering and convincing addressees, informing addressees that the children have knowledge, narrating stories, commanding to do something, asking what to do, offering favours, threatening, and expressing dislike, pain and anger. The occurrences depended on the addressees, gender, status and situation or occasions.