THE STUDY OF SPEECH ACTS IN IRAQI ELT ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess Iraqi English textbooks for the first, second, and third grades of high school in terms of speech acts. The researcher relied on Searle’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts (1969). To do this, 18 conversations in three high school textbooks (English for Iraq) were evaluated in order to determine the weight of speech acts. The data were analyzed very carefully and directive features with some examples were elicited from these books. The contents of the textbooks were compared according to Searle’s theory (of Speech Act) regarding directives aspects and the material that covered in English for Iraq series. The results of descriptive statistics showed that all types of speech acts including declaratives, representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives were used in Iraqi high school English textbooks for all three grades. Expressives were the most frequent speech acts used in the conversations. To look precisely, in the first-grade English textbook for high school, directives were the most frequent type of speech act used in conversations. For the second and third grade English textbooks, expressives were the most frequent type of speech acts used in the conversations. It was also found that there was no significant difference among Iraqi high school English textbooks in the distribution of speech acts. Finally, it was found that the speech acts were not distributed evenly in Iraqi textbooks. The equal distribution of all speech acts in English textbooks is necessary to familiarize students with all sentences and their functions.