期刊名称：International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
电子版ISSN：2222-6990
出版年度：2021
卷号：11
期号：10
页码：860-876
DOI：10.6007/IJARBSS/v11-i10/11455
语种：English
出版社：Human Resource Management Academic Research Society
摘要：Pragmatics is the branch of linguistics which involves the study of the contextual meanings of words and phrases as well as sentences in terms of spoken and written communication. As technologically-enabled means of communication, social media and YouTube are prominent and play important roles as marketing tools. In this context, TED Talks are useful for creating awareness among the young generation about significant issues, inspiring, motivating and cultivating their confidence so as to encourage them in the pursuit of their career goals. The ideas promulgated by TED speakers are often impressive, producing powerful influences on audiences. However, it could be rather difficult to comprehend the intended meanings of the language used by these speakers from the pragmatic perspective, where it has its own functions in relation to the choice of words in the speech. Therefore, the present study investigates the way speech acts are utilised by TED Talk speakers and how audiences are attracted to and convinced by their presentation skills. The data was collected from the TED Talks webpage and the talks were based on millennial workplace. The data was analysed qualitatively (Creswell, 2014) by applying speech act theory (Searle, 1979) in the analysis of assertive, directive, expressive, commissive, and declarative illocutionary acts. The findings show that assertive types were the most predominantly used by these three speakers in conveying their intended ideas. The findings further reveal that directive types were the second most used by the speakers, the purpose of which was to incite the listeners to deliberate on the ideas expressed in the talks based on the topics. It is hoped that the present study provides ideas to speakers for choosing the appropriate speech acts in conveying their intended messages in their talks.
