Speech Acts and Personal Narrative: Analysing Meghan Markle’s Use of Speech Acts

This study describes the types and functions of speech acts performed by Meghan Markle during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. The script of the interview constitutes the data. The data analysis is based on five classifications of Searl and Austin’s speech actc theory: declarative, assertive, expressive, directive and commissive. The data was analysed via MAXQDA through coding. The results indicate that mostly four types of speech acts were performed in her 364 utterances consisting of 318 utterances of representative, 26 utterances of directive, 15 utterances of expressive, and 5 utterances of commissive. Based on this finding, it was concluded that Meghan Markel used representative speech act most and that she mainly gave statements of fact or described things that she believed to be true. Additionally, the authors analyse the significance of Meghan Markle’s use of ‘I’ in her statements and draw conclusions based on these observations.