A Pragmatic Study of Directive Illocutionary Acts in the Qur'anic Discourse

This study deals with the use of directive illocutionary acts in the Qur'anic discourse from a pragmatic perspective as one of the communicative means based on speech act theory. It explains how commands, prohibitions, requests, advice, and other directive forms are expressed in the Qur’anic text and affect the addressee. The study addresses two key problems: first, how the directive speech acts are formed and employed in the Qur'anic discourse? Second, what are the pragmatic features that distinguishes them according to the context, intention and the relationship between the addresser and the addressee? The study aims at identifying the directive acts according to speech act theory, classifying them to (commands, prohibition, and advice), analyzing the pragmatic dimensions according to context, intention and the relationship between the addresser and addressee, and revealing the unique rhetorical and communicative strategies used in the Qur’anic discourse to direct, guide, or influence the addressee. The study sets out of two hypotheses: the directive acts are essential means in communication and the Qur'anic text has various shapes of these acts that are employed accurately to achieve various purposes. The adopted model in this study is (Austin, 1962) In his book "How to Do Things with Words " and (Searle, 1969) in his book "Speech Acts" where they explain that speech acts do not only convey information, but performs specific acts, like threatening, intimidation, and promise. The study includes six sections: an introduction which explains the discourse and the illocutionary speech acts is the first section. The pragmatics and the religious discourse is clarified in the second one. The speech act theory is focused on in the third one. Directive illocutionary speech acts and the examples from the Qur'anic texts are discussed in the fourth one. Indirect directive acts are focused on in the fifth section. A conclusion where the study finds that directive acts in the Glorious Qur'an not only linguistic tools, but they are an integral part of rhetorical structure of text. They are characterized with communicative and semantic depth to express the relationship between addressers and addressees within a linguistic style exceeds sayings into actions and changes is the sixth one.