RESEARCH ARTICLE European Journal of Education and Pedagogy www.ej-edu.org DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24018/ejedu.2022.3.4.376 Vol 3 | Issue 4 | July 2022 9 I. INTRODUCTION The statement that language plays a pivotal role in the fulfillment of man’s existence and survival remains an invariable datum more so now that technological breakthroughs are felt in every corner of the world (Motteram, 2013). Incontestably, language has been and is still the most powerful weapon that humans utilize for innumerable reasons. It is through language that cultures and traditions were handed from generation to generation. Relics from the oldest of human civilizations endure the test of time chiefly because of language. And literature, serving as a time travel engine, provides us a glimpse of the past. These reasons solidify how supreme the role of language to humanity is. Thus, it is not surprising that through time, theories, approaches, and philosophies aiming to study language were given premium. One of those is the so-called Discourse Analysis (DA). Oxford English Dictionary defines DA as a method of analyzing the structure of texts or utterances longer than one sentence, taking into account both their linguistic content and their sociolinguistic context. According to Widdowson (1979), the aforementioned term refers to an investigation into the way sentences are put to communicative use in the performance of social actions. In addition, Stubbs (1983) defined it as an attempt to study the organization of language above the sentence or above the clause, hence, opening windows for scrutinizing larger linguistic units in conversational exchanges or written texts. With that, DA is one of the most important means by which a language is analyzed objectively and comprehensively. It is an avenue in which a series of utterances is given meaning. In the field of research, DA is a method for studying written or spoken language in relation to its social context (Renz et al., 2018). It intends to understand how language is used in conversation situations, specifically: identifying the purposes and effects of different types of language, cultural rules, and conventions in communication, how values, beliefs, and assumptions are communicated, and how language use relates to its social, political and historical context (Shamsiddinovna, 2021). One of the most common approaches to DA is the Speech Act Theory. This is essentially concerned with the ways in which language can be used for communication. Proposed by Austin (1955) (as cited in Petrey, 2016) and Searle (1969) (as cited in Allwood, 1977), this originated as a theory within the philosophy of language to explain ways that humans can use language. It is a logico-philosophic perspective on conversational organization focusing on interpretation rather than the production of utterances in discourse. Moreover, this grows from the basic belief that language is used to perform actions. The theory looks at the roles of utterances in relation to behavior or attitudes of the interlocutors in communicative discourse (Ekoro & Gunn, 2021). Based on the theory, every utterance can be analyzed as the realization of the speaker’s intent (illocutionary force) to achieve a particular purpose (Gordon, 2021). In this study, the focus of the analysis is speech act (SA) or illocutionary force (IF). DA and its approaches are not confined to dissecting meanings behind word and sentence levels based on conversation exchanges that transpire in real-life situations. Speech act analysis, for instance, can provide us with a means of burrowing beneath the surface of discourse and establishing the function of what is said (Altikriti, 2011) by a particular character in a fiction e.g., a novel or short story. Speech Act Analysis of Amador Daguio’s The Wedding Dance Jerry A. Serdeña ABSTRACT The study of meaning behind word and sentence levels is the core of discourse analysis. It burrows beneath the surface of conversation exchanges between characters in a literary piece. Doing so draws the readers to the context of the story. Hence, this paper attempted to exhaustively analyze a short story titled Wedding Dance written by a Filipino poet and novelist, Amador Daguio. To comprehensively scrutinize the meat of the utterances as the linguistic data in the analysis process, the researcher utilized Searle’s five (5) speech act categories. The findings of the study showed that the conversation exchanges between the main characters, Awiyao and Lumnay, are abundant in terms of directives, commissives, representatives, declarations or performatives, and expressives. Keywords: Commissives, Declaratives, Directives, Expressives, Representatives, Speech Act Analysis, Wedding Dance. Published Online: July 09, 2022 ISSN: 2736-4534 DOI :10.24018/ejedu.2022.3.4.376 J. A. Serdeña* Eastern Visayas State University, Tanauan Campus, Philippines. (jerry.serdena evsu.edu.ph) *Corresponding Author @