Competitive speech acts in English and Arabic : a contrastive study

Abstract EN

Competitive speech acts are one of the language functions that have been classified by Jeffrey Leech in 1983 in the Theory of Speech Acts.

The present study compares Competitive speech acts in two languages: English and Arabic.

It investigates the points of similarity and differences of Competitive speech acts in the two languages.

It aims at describing, analyzing and comparing Competitive speech acts in English and Arabic due to their importance in any conversational exchange between two or more people.

It also aims at comparing Competitive speech acts between the two languages by defining them, showing their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects.

The study hypothesizes that Competitive speech acts are found in both languages.

It explains Competitive speech acts of asking, begging and ordering through giving and explaining the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of each competitive act in the two languages.

The major findings of the study are that Competitive speech acts are found in English and Arabic.

In English, Competitive speech acts have been classified clearly by Leech as one of the language functions that are very important in understanding the speech act theory.

In Arabic, Arab linguists take this classification of Competitive speech acts and apply and study it in their language where there is a great attention in the study of speech act theory by Arab linguists.