Speech Act Analysis on Barrack Obama’s Speech in Indonesia Ahmad Kirom 07320064 CHAPTER I A. Background of the study Speech acts are actions performed via utterances (apology, complaint, compliment, etc). They apply to the speaker’s communicative intention in producing an utterance. The speaker normally expects that his/her communicative intention will be recognized by the hearer. Both speaker and hearer are usually helped in this process by the circumstances surrounding utterances. These circumstances, including other utterances, are called speech events. In many ways, it is the nature of the speech event that determines the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act. For example, the utterance this tea is really cold (Yule, 1996:48), functions as a complaint if it is uttered on a winter day, when the speaker reaches for a cup of tea, believing that it has been freshly made. It may also function as praise if it is uttered on a really hot summer’s day, with th