Speech Acts in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado: Exploring the Themes of Revenge and Betrayal

Abstract

Speech acts are a crucial component of interpersonal communication and enable people to accomplish pragmatic and social objectives beyond merely conveying factual information. Additionally, they offer a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying semantic production and aid in revealing a speaker's latent will. This study looks at the usage of speech acts in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Cask of Amontillado. This investigation's primary objective is to identify and analyze the many illocutionary act phenomena that are described in the short story and to comprehend how these concepts relate to the themes of betrayal and revenge that are covered. The goal of the study is to categorize illocutionary acts according to their representational, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative categories using the qualitative descriptive approach. The results show that whereas Fortunato's comments are frequently representative and expressive, revealing his ignorance and pride, Montresor's statements are primarily commissive and directive, demonstrating his deceptive tactics and hidden objectives. The study comes to the conclusion that speech act analysis offers a deeper understanding of the psychological and social roles that language plays in Poe's story, demonstrating how literary communication transcends storytelling to provide a more comprehensive pragmatic effect.