A pragmatic study of directive speech acts in 'Asiacell' and 'Zain' advertisements

Abstract EN

The simplest cases of linguistic communication are those in which the speaker utters an utterance and means exactly and literally what he says.

But not all cases of expressing meaning are this simple.

In many cases what the speaker means and the utterance meaning come apart in various ways.

One important instance of such cases is that in which the speaker utters an utterance, means what he says, but also means something more.

Within the advertisements of the two mobile phone companies, Asiacell and Zain, it is noticed that extra meanings are expressed in addition to the exact words forming these advertisements.

This paper tries to shed light on the nature of the language used in these advertisements by studying the different directive speech acts utilized in them.