A Pragmatic Study of Speech Acts in Azizi Malay Rush's Novel "The Wolf and the Goat"

Abstract

Communication is not just uttering certain linguistic expressions without a proposition. Participants need to identify what speech act is conveyed by a specific utterance. Additionally, they have to know the functions of a particular utterance as they are more important. This study aims to identify categories of speech acts and their functions in a Kurdish novel by analyzing randomly selected extracts to better understand the theme, using a qualitative descriptive method. The data of the study are sourced from a Kurdish literary text "Gurg u Bzin" (The Wolf and the Goat) (1989), written by "Azizi Malay Rush". This study adopts Searle's classification of speech acts (1969) in which he divides speech acts into five types, assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declaratives. It is hypothesized that the theme of the novel can be analyzed pragmatically through the identification and classification of speech acts into their types and the analysis of their functions. The results reveal that Malay Rush uses five types of speech acts (commissives, directives, expressives, declaratives, and assertives) in the selected texts from the novel. Additionally, assertive and directive acts are used more frequently throughout the novel.