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An Analysis of the Pragmatic Function of English Intonation Based on Speech Act Theory: Taking the Intonation of the Oracle in The Matrix as an Example

Jiaying Wang,Pan Pan

Published 2024 in Journal of Educational Research and Policies

ABSTRACT

Intonation still finds itself one of the most difficult problems for many EFL learners. However, there are few pieces of literature that have explored the relationship between these two elements: illocutionary acts and intonation patterns. Therefore, this study attempts to do so, taking the intonation used in the character Oracle’s lines in the film The Matrix as an experimental database, and then summarizing and categorizing the intentions based on John Searle’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts. After analyzing 265 lines, four candidates were invited to label their own understanding of the illocutionary act of the character by perceiving the characters’ intonation. The chi-square results which show the similarity of their shared understanding turned out to be diverse, from which we concluded several kinds of causes with qualitative analysis: 1) different educational backgrounds; 2) the effectiveness of teaching intonation in China is not up to standard; 3) insufficient understanding of the movie context. Our research studies intonation from a different scope than the traditional top-down model, to provide a theoretical supplement to the intonation function research to some extent, and at the same time to provide English learners with some theoretical help for intonation learning and promote the improvement of their speaking.

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