SPEECH ACTS IN FILM “SPIDERMAN : HOMECOMING” AND THEIR IMPLICATION IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

EFL learners are often exposed to English mainly through grammar-focused
materials, with limited opportunities to observe how language functions as action
in authentic, context-rich communication. This study analyzes the speech acts
performed by the characters in the film Spider-Man: Homecoming and discusses
their implications for English language teaching. This research employs a
qualitative descriptive design. The data are 300 selected utterances drawn from
the film dialogues and the official transcript, which were transcribed, crosschecked with the English subtitles, and classified using Searle's (1969) fivecategory taxonomy of speech acts (representatives, directives, commissives,
expressives, and declaratives), following the interactive analysis model of Miles et
al. (2014) consisting of data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing
and verification. The findings show that all five types of speech acts were
identified, with directive speech acts as the most dominant category (215
utterances, 71.7%), followed by expressive (36, 12.0%), representative (30,
10.0%), commissive (17, 5.7%), and declarative speech acts (2, 0.6%). The
pragmatic realization analysis further reveals that interrogative forms are mainly
used to ask for information or confirmation, while imperative forms are used to
give commands, instructions, and requests, and that the same linguistic form may
carry different pragmatic functions depending on context. These findings suggest
that the selected film dialogues can serve as authentic supplementary material for
teaching English, particularly for activities that build learners' pragmatic
awareness and communicative competence.
Keywords: Speech acts; Pragmatics; Film discourse; Searle's theory; English
language teaching.