The Imperative Speech Acts of College Community in Ternate, Indonesia

This study aims to describe the context's nature and role in interpreting the formal form of people's imperative speech acts in higher education settings in Ternate. A qualitative method was carried out on the content analysis to analyze the form of communication content among students, administrative staff, and teachers at Muhammadiyah University of North Maluku, Indonesia. The research procedure was started by collecting data in the form of imperative speech acts (verbal and nonverbal) and a combination of the two obtained through observation, recording, and field notes. The data was then interpreted comprehensively and summarized narratively for the conclusions. The results show that the formal form of imperative speech act in the local language of Ternate, used by the community college at UMMU, retains the basic verb in utterances. The findings suggest that teachers, students, and administrative staff effectively use the relevant speech acts in presenting and reacting to criticism, providing instruction, and handling concerns. Furthermore, new users of Ternate’s local language should understand the imperative speech act based on the verb form to produce and comprehend the utterances during communication.