Studies on political speeches are not new and cover various aspects including that of language use. Political speeches are a medium through which ideas and ideologies are communicated through language use for the sake of the listener’s understanding. The success of delivering a political speech depends on the use of persuasive arguments. This study presents an analysis of the use of speech acts as an effective argumentative strategy. Its two objectives are to compare the use of speech acts in two different situations, and to explain the results obtained from the comparison. The data of the study comprise two keynote addresses by Zahid Hamidi. The first is the keynote at the 2017 UMNO General Assembly before the 14th General Election (PRU14) in 2017, and the second is his keynote address at the 2018 UMNO General Assembly, after the party's defeat in PRU14. The analysis used qualitative method, adopting Bach and Harnish's (1979) theoretical framework. Overall findings show Zahid Hamidi used constatives, directives, commissives and acknowledgements in his speeches. Constatives and directives were specifically utilised to influence and convince the audience of his arguments more in his 2017 speech than in the 2018 one. After PRU14, Zahid used more of commissives and acknowledgments. Commissives stand at 10.3% in the 2018 speech, compared to 4.5% in 2017 and acknowledgements is at 9.3% in 2018 compared to 5.4% in 2017. The change in use of the speech acts across the two years suggests that Zahid has had to adjust his use of words and language to fit in with the 2018 socio-political scenario. The results show that socio-political scenario clearly has an impact on the type of speech acts used in politicians’ speeches. The findings also send a message to politicians that their speeches should contain speech acts appropriate to the current scenario, which can be understood clearly by their supporters.
