Semantic Components of English Directive Speech Act Verbs (Order, Command, Instruct)

This research focuses on synonymous English speech act verbs that mean “giving order” (directive). The verbs analyzed in this study are those with very close synonymy, namely order, command, and instruct. The aim of this research is to describe in more detail the semantic behavior of the directive English speech act verbs through their semantic component. This semantics study is qualitative descriptive research. The data in this study were collected by using corpus linguistics and observation methods with note-taking techniques. The data source is the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). There are 300 citations for each verb analyzed, which making in total 900 citations analyzed in the study. The study found that the verbs order, command, and instruct has eight semantic features/components that differentiate those three verbs, namely the components of authority, the way of saying, form of order, the duration of orders, level of urgency, actor and undergoer positions, domain of use, compliance level.