Speech Acts and Their Manifestations in the Poetry Collection *Thus I Excavate* by Karam Al-A'raji Pragmatic Study

Abstract

Abstract:

            This research aims to uncover the speech acts that embody the poet’s intentions and objectives within his collection. These acts serve as messages conveyed to the recipient, inviting them to share in the poet’s experiences and emotions through language that oscillates between symbolism and the subversion of the reader's horizon of expectations. Given that speech act theory focuses on language in its various uses—placing significant emphasis on the contexts of discourse and situation, social conventions, and speaker intentions—I have chosen it as the framework for revealing the poet's intentions and the speech acts performed in the collection. The study comprises two sections, preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion summarizing the key findings; the first section provides a theoretical overview of speech acts, while the second offers a practical application of the theory to selected examples from the collection. Language has received great attention as a means of communication and conveying ideas. It is known that the clarity of different concepts and ideas is determined by the precision of the words that indicate them. This interest came from linguists as well as philosophers who showed great care for language. Their philosophical theories about it were numerous. Some of them focused on its formal, symbolic aspect, which is represented by logical positivism, and some of them focused on its performative and functional aspect and what it accomplishes when used, which is represented by analytic philosophy, which focused on studying ordinary language in use, and established the theory of speech acts, which is the nucleus of pragmatics, and its meaning is to reveal the speaker’s intentions and what he accomplishes through speech.