ILLOCUTIONARY SPEECH ACTS OF VERBAL BULLYING IN DAHL’S THE BIG FRIENDLY GIANT AND ITS IMPACTS ON SELF-ESTEEM OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS

This thesis aimed to describe illocutionary speech acts of verbal bullying
from a children’s literature entitled The Big Friendly Giant written by Roald
Dahl. The research was designed as a qualitative study and applied
content analysis. The instruments were the tables containing illocutionary
speech acts indicating verbal bullying and self-esteem. The data formed in
the narrative quotations were analyzed by applying Searle’s (1969) of
illocutionary speech acts. Furthermore, the data are connected with the
issue of self-esteem having five senses proposed by Reasoners (2010)
such as a sense of security, identity, belonging, purpose, and
competence. The results showed that two main figures experienced four of
six verbal bullying types, such as insulting, consisting of 19 utterances, or
73% of the whole data, reviling (5.3%), calling bad names (19%), and
accusing (5.3%). Meanwhile, the data on self-esteem informed 1 utterance
of sense of identity (7%), belonging (2 utterances or 15%), purpose (5
utterances or 36%), and competence (6 utterances or 43%). The findings
proved that The Big Friendly Giant can be recommended as English
subject material because it provides a unique illustration for school
students in dealing with verbal bullying, which motivates them to erect a
better future.
Key Words: Illocutionary Speech Acts, The Big Friendly Giant, Verbal
Bullying, Self-Esteem.