Speech Acts on Japanese Posters to Raise Environmental Awareness

Abstract

The objectives of this research are 1) to classify the speech acts that appear on Japanese posters aimed at raising awareness about the environment, based on Searle’s speech act theory (1969). 2) to study the occurrence of both direct and indirect speech acts on these posters. The dataset comprises Japanese utterances from 235 posters issued by Government Agencies across Japan's 47 prefectures. The posters were divided into 3 parts: headline, sub-headline, and body text, to facilitate an investigation into the types of speech acts present in each part.

The result showed that first, out of a total of 1986 utterances from 235 posters, the distribution of speech acts was representatives: 1181 utterances (59.47%), directives: 722 utterances (36.35%), expressives: 44 utterances (2.22%), declarations: 36 utterances (1.81%) and commissives: 3 utterances (0.15%). Representatives and directives were found in significant numbers across all parts of the posters. Second, a total of 1911 utterances (96.22%) were identified as direct speech acts, while 75 utterances (3.78%) were categorized as indirect speech acts. Among the indirect speech acts, directives were the most prevalent (42 utterances or 56%). Notably, commissives and declarations were not employed as part of indirect speech acts.

The findings of this research underscore the prevalence of representatives and directives, aligning with the posters' overarching objective of promoting greater environmental understanding and awareness. Consequently, representatives were used to convey factual information, while directives were employed to encourage readers to respond to the intentions of the message sender.