چکیده:
Abstract
The present study aimed at investigating all oral activities included in the speaking and listening
sections of the Iranian high school English textbooks and the Iraqi junior high school English
textbooks in terms of their pragmatic aspects with a focus on speech acts using Searle’s (1976)
model for macro-functions and two other models for analysis of micro-functions including Quirk
et al. (1985) and Matreyek (1990). To this end, the frequency and type of each speech act was
identified. Also the context of each conversation was examined for the meaningfulness of the
conversations.The results indicated that the speech acts in the Iraqi textbooks were more frequent
than the Iranian ones and there were more various types of speech acts in the Iraqi textbooks in
comparison with the Iranian ones. In addition, language functions in the Iraqi textbooks mostly
occurred in meaningful contexts while the Iranian ones did not provide such meaningful contexts.
Furthermore, it was revealed that out of five different kinds of language functions proposed by
Searle (1976), only three of them, i.e. representative, directive and expressive macro-functions
were used in the Iranian textbooks. The Iraqi textbooks proved superior in this case as well since
they included the three types of speech acts identified in the Iranian English textbooks plus the
commissive type.