Directive Speech Acts Used in Lady Gaga’s Singles (from the Albums The Fame, The Fame Monster, and Born This Way)

Abstract

This research paper aims to examine the use of speech acts of directive utterances in Lady Gaga’s singles. This study explores the lyrics of 13 different singles from the albums The Fame (2008), The Fame Monster (2009), and Born This Way (2011). In finding the directive utterances in the lyrics, this study applies the semantic theory of speech acts as proposed by Kreidler (1998). Three kinds of directive utterances can be recognized: commands, requests, and suggestions. These can be either in positive or negative expressions. This study finds that there are 48 directive utterances used in the 13 singles for this study in total, with the composition: 12 commands (25%), with 10 positives and 2 negatives, 25 requests (52%), with 19 positives and 6 negatives, and 11 suggestions (23%), with 10 positives and 1 negative. While according to positive or negative expressions, there 39 positives (81%) and 9 negatives (19%) expressions.