Assertive acts used in The Zoo Story drama by Edward Albee

Assertive acts is a theory that explains about the utterance by the speaker to commit in doing something. It can be form of informing, claiming, conveying, describing, and giving statement. The writer analyzes assertive acts in the dialogue of Jerry and Peter in “The Zoo Story”. This study is important because none of earlier assertive acts studies focused their research on dialogue of Jerry and Peter in this drama. This study investigates form of assertive acts and the social factor that influence to use it in “The Zoo Story”. Descriptive qualitative method is used to analyze the data in this study. The data present descriptively because it describes and explain assertive acts used by the character in “The Zoo Story” such as describe form of assertive acts and the social factor of the assertive acts found in dialogue of Jerry and Peter. The finding shows that there are five forms of assertive acts found in this study such as: inform, claim, convey, statement and describe. While the social factor that influence the character to use assertive acts such are participant, function, topic, and setting. It is hoped that this research contributes important information for the next researcher who is interested in doing the same kind of study. However, it is suggested for further researcher to use another theory of assertive acts so that different result might be found.