How Illocutionary Acts Reflect the Cultural Practices of the Participant at The County Assembly of Bomet

Abstract

This paper examined the debates at the County Assembly of Bomet in order to establish the ways in which the performance of illocutionary acts help in revealing the cultural practices of the Kipsigis community. The use of speech acts varies across different contexts and this variability has been noted to cause communication breakdown in some speech situations. Effective communication is possible when interlocutors share the same cultural background which enables them to interpret speech utterances appropriately. The objective of the study was to examine the ways in which the use of speech acts by the debaters reflected the cultural practices of the Kipsigis community where the debaters were socialized. The study used Austin’s (1962) Speech Act Theory and the Five Categories of Speech Acts identified by Searle (2005), which include directives, expressives, commissives, declaratives, and assertives. The study also incorporated insights in the study of speech acts from Sotillo (2017). The study purposefully sampled three motions from the Hansards recorded between the year 2013 and 2017. The data was downloaded from Bomet County Assembly’s website. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that every utterance produced by the debaters in the County Assembly could be categorized under one of the major categories of speech acts proposed by Searle (1969). The results further showed that the Kipsigis cultural practices are brought to the fore by the arguers as they try to justify their claims.