Persuasive Speech Acts in Selected Short Surahs of the Glorious Quran

Abstract

This study delves into illocutionary speech acts and their pragmatic functions in standard Arabic religious discourse. It aims to examine illocutionary speech acts specifically and their pragmatic functions in Surah Al-Balad and Surah At-teen, which are short Surahs of the Glorious Quran, from a persuasive perspective. The significance of this study is to show the role of speech acts and their pragmatic functions as persuasive strategies used in the Holy Quran to convince people. Data for this study have been selected on the basis that they involve different types of  direct and indirect illocutionary speech acts and different pragmatic functions, in addition,  they seem to have not been tackled before from the perspective of persuasion.  Furthermore,  exegetical books like Al Shirazi,  Qutb and Al Tabatabaei  have been consulted for the interpretation of the previously mentioned Surahs on which the analysis depends. In this study,  a qualitative method has been used to analyze the data and only twenty three examples have been examined. The conclusions of this study are that different illocutionary speech acts like representatives, directives, commissives and expressive and different pragmatic functions such as asserting, censuring, ordering,  threatening,  promising and blaming were used in the said Surahs for persuasion. Moreover, indirect  illocutionary speech acts and their pragmatic functions in both Surahs were heavily used and several of them were performed in the form of a rhetorical question for a persuasive purpose in which people are involved in communication and an effect is created on their minds and hearts to make them reform themselves. Direct illocutionary speech acts and their pragmatic functions were also persuasively  used in both Surahs  to assert truths and to make people accept them and behave accordingly.