نوع مقاله : علمی- پژوهشی
A Study of the Communicative Function of Speech Acts in Khamsa ‘Ashara Prayer
Zahra Afzaly
Professor , Department of Quranic Studies and Hadith, Bu_Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran
Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that studies meaning in context and the relative distance of interlocutors in a verbal interaction. Speech act is a central notion in pragmatics which has been subject to various theoretical discussions. One of the prominent theories, proposed by John Searle, recognizes five types of speech act: representatives, directives, expressives, commissives, and declarations. Several other theories have dealt with the communicative function of speech acts. From among these, Mary Finocchiaro theory classifies the communicative functions of speech acts into five groups: personal, interpersonal, directive, referential, and imaginative. The present paper seeks to examine the communicative function of speech acts in Imam Sajjad’s prayer called Khamsa ‘Ashara. To this end, the speech acts in the prayer were first studied using Searle’s theory. Next, their functions were analyzed using Finocchiaro framework. This study is a descriptive-analytical one intended to clarify the verbal communication of Imam Sajjad with God Almighty. The findings suggest that representative, directive, and expressive speech acts are more frequent in the prayer. Among these, representatives are the most frequent and expressives the least frequent. More specifically and in terms of communicative functions, there is evidence of personal function and interpersonal function for these three speech acts in the utterances of this prayer
Keywords: pragmatics, speech act, communicative function, Imam Sajjad, Khamsa ‘Ashara prayer
