A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM “BILL” JEFFERSON CLINTON’S APOLOGY SPEECHES I MISLED AND I HAVE SINNED

摘要

The objectives of this research were 1) to find out the kinds of speech acts employed in the two apology speeches of President Clinton, I Misled and I Have Sinned based on Searle‟s theory on illocutionary forces, 2) to find out the context of situation that influences the speeches, and 3) to explain the arrangements of classical rhetoric speeches in the delivery of President Clinton‟s apology speeches. udThis study applied a descriptive-qualitative research. The object of this study was all utterances spoken by President William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton in his two apology speeches during the Lewinsky scandal, I Misled and I Have Sinned. The data were in the form of words, phrases, utterances, and discourse uttered by him in the apology speeches. The researcher has the role of planning, collecting, analysing, and reporting the research finding. A set of Clinton‟s speeches, the speech transcripts, and the data sheets were also employed as supporting instruments. Some steps were undertaken during the data collection: watching the videos of the speeches, finding their transcripts, making data sheets, and categorising. The researcher collected documents to do an in-depth learning process and interpretations. This technique of collecting data was a non-interactive technique. This research was principally using credibility, dependability and conformability to check the trustwothiness of the data. udThe research result showed that there was a different approach to be made from his first to his second apology speech under the essence of embracing the society‟s forgiveness. That attitude was represented through illocutionary acts performed by him. The most illocutionary acts performed was representatives under the act of convincing. In his second apology, he did not perform offensive acts such as protesting, blaming, and refuting which means that he changed his attitude, to maintain harmony between the speaker and the hearers. Mostly, regretting, apologizing, and thanking were performed as illocutionary acts of expressives. In the result of the arrangement of classical rhetoric, among six parts of rhetoric, the most dominant for both speeches is proof. However, what became so different is about the content itself. Proofs that were presented in I Misled showed self-defense for the speaker instead of giving more elaboration on apology purposes. On the contrary, I Have Sinned gave more elaboration on its proof to show the purpose of apologising. Thus, his second apology was more effective because he gave himself credibility through the use of structure and language by making himself sound sincere and by not placing the blame on his opponents. He formed the minds of his audience and made them elaborate on the information to create their own opinions that he was innocent. If the idea of his innocence came from within their minds, they would in turn accept his apology, support him, and take the actions that he asked them to.