The Use of Speech Act as Communication Strategy of Children with Autism

Abstract

Autism is considered as the cause of linguistics impairment. It was believed to be responsible for a pragmatic deficit for the person with autism. This study aims to describe how children with autism use speech act as the strategy of their communication in the classroom. The data was taken from one special needs school (SLBN) in Surakarta. The study involved five students at the elementary level and two students at a junior high level. The data were taken from the recording of the classroom activity to get the lingual set used for further analysis. The data were then transcribed and analyzed using a matching technique. Means-end analysis from the speakers' point of view was employed to find out what speech act strategy the speakers used, in this case, children with autism, to reach their goal in the utterance. The results surprisingly showed that most of the children with autism were using a directive speech act. The other type of speech acts employed by the children was assertive. In directive utterance uttered by the children with autism, it was predominantly used to ask or request. However, this strategy is helpful for them to ask for reassurance from the speaking partner, teacher, to get clear comprehension.

Assessing Perlocutionary Effects through Directive Speech Acts in an Autistic Child during Joint Comprehension Activities

“…The lack of pragmatic understanding by the subject does not support speech acts that require shared understanding (Deliens et al, 2018). Instead, speech acts that are more direct such as declaratives and especially directives are observed to assist in promoting a turn during a conversation (Wahyunianto et al, 2020).…”

“…Also, as observed in the previous section, speech acts do indeed have an impact on the conversational structure, especially directive speech acts. This is attested by Wahyunianto et al (2020) where they stated that most of the children with autism were using a directive speech act. Excerpt 13 shows an instance during the joint-comprehension activity where the interlocutor utilized an expressive speech act "no?…”

“…For example, a mother asking her child to clean up her room; "Aminah, clean up your room before going to school". In contrast to the joint-comprehension nature of the activity, directive speech acts are one-sided in a way that the subject does not need to understand why the directive is given (Wahyunianto et al, 2020), but merely just having to do them. As Searle (1979) made a distinction between direct and indirect speech acts, indirect speech acts being utterances that are understood from the context without mentioning the act itself.…”

“…In line with this instrumental preference, children with autism are reported to produce more feedback during interaction and comprehend better towards directive speech acts than speech acts that facilitate shared understanding such as representatives and expressive speech acts (Baron-Cohen, 1985;2019). Searle (1975) also argued that in order to understand indirect speech acts, the speaker and hearer need to have mutually shared factual background information, and the ability of the hearer to make inferences (Wahyunianto et al, 2020). Subsequently upon application, it is harder to apply to interactions with the children with ASD due to the pragmatic deficit that they share (Shire et al, 2020).…”

Seloko pada acara lamaran masyarakat Melayu Jambi: Tindak tutur Searle

“…Musyawarah tersebut dapat dilihat sebagai pertukaran tindak tutur. Tindak tutur juga sangat penting dipahami dikarenakan agar tidak terjadi kesalahpahaman dalam komunikasi antara penutur dan pendengar (Wahyunianto et al, 2020). Austin merupakan seorang filsuf dari Inggris yang mana pada tahun 1962 menciptakan teori tindak tutur.…”