The Speech Acts and Their Contextual Functions in the Kids' Textbooks in Iranian Language Teaching Institutes

This study was conducted on the speech acts and their contextual functions in the kids' textbooks in Iranian language teaching institutes. The study was an attempt to know which speech act is more frequently used in the kids' books including Magic Time, First Friends, and Tiny Talk. To this end, the researcher obtained the books mentioned. Then, she observed, selected, and counted all speech acts and their functions to see which speech acts and functions are more frequently used. Searle’s (۱۹۷۶) speech acts model was used to analyze the data. After counting the speech acts and their functions, the percentage and frequency were used to arrive at the final findings. The findings showed that directives, assertives, and expressives were respectively the most frequently used speech acts and commissives and declarations were the least used speech acts in the kids' books. It was also revealed that the most frequent function was commanding. The results of Chi-square test indicated that the speech acts and their functions in the kids' books were not distributed equally. Finally, implications arising from the findings and suggestions for further research have been explained.

کلیدواژه ها:

Language functions ، Speech acts ، Pragmatics ، Textbooks