INVESTIGATING THE LINGUISTIC FORMS OF SPEECH ACTS IN "IRAQ OPPORTUNITIES" SERIES

Abstract

The development of Pragmatic rules of language use is very important for language learners. So, it is necessary to teach the foreign learner how to use language effectively as well as how to distinguish between the form and the function of it because failure to do so may cause users to misuse as well as miscomprehend the target language. Thus, the present study aims at analyzing the conversation sections of "Student's Book 8" which is one of the activities in "Iraq Opportunities" series that have been taught in Iraqi schools. The study deals with linguistic forms functions and speech acts presented in this textbook to find out whether it is pragmatically competent or not. The adopted model is Searle's (1976) classification of speech acts, i.e. representatives, directives, expressives, commissives and declaratives. It is a quantative study to find out the number and percentages of the linguistic forms, functions of language forms and speech acts class in the written conversation sections of this textbook.