Muhammad Akram
Ph.D. candidate, English Department (Applied Linguistics), The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan

Speech Acts: A Contrastive Study of Speech Acts in Urdu and English

Language is considered to be a product of social contact. Language or linguistic acts that intend to influence the reality are generally known as ‘Speech Acts’. The idea of Speech Acts finds its roots in the Philosophy of Language. Models of communication often give it very little function. On the one hand, the present study throws light on the contribution made by J.L. Austin and John R Searle in the field of Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory, and on the other it highlights the significant contrasts in the speech acts in the Urdu (an Indo-Aryan language spoken world widely due to South Asian Diaspora) and English (Indo-European language) with regard to sex, level of formality, structure and frequency etc.

The study focuses on the intentions of the speakers and their utterances (illocutionary, locutionary and perlocutionary aspects of Speech Acts). About fifty informants have been taken in the study and their utterances have been analyzed. The present study will be a valuable addition in the pragmatic field of language study.

Presenter
Muhammad Akram is a Ph.D. candidate at English Department (Applied Linguistics) The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. His research interests are Socio-psychological variables in SLA, Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Comparative study of Urdu and English.