Social Representation of Women's Speech Acts (case Study: Hooshang Moradi Kermani's Novels Women's Speech Acts

Language shows the culture of a nation and its study can reveal hidden parts of a culture in a society. Specially, in conversations, it can be a distinctive and full example of ideas and cultures of societies within a special time and place context. Related to the significance of language in social interactions, this research opened a new path and tried to study women’s speech acts in Hooshang Moradi Kermani’s novels. In fact, based on the crucial role of women in creating a family and community, the type of women’s speech act and their impact on power relations in society were investigated. This was done by using John Searle perspective and method. Speech acts were divided into 5 categories including directive, assertive, expressive, commissive and declaration acts by Searle and emphasized the conditional context of speeches such as time, place and peoples’ position in society. In this way, Moradi Kermani’s Novels were purposefully investigated based on these five speech acts. The results of this research showed that because of the lack of power among women, especially administrative power in rural societies, they had used directive speech acts more and even their assertive and expressive speech acts had been used for motivating audiences to indirectly encourage and convince others (especially men and husbands) for reaching their purposes. Also, comissive and declaration speech acts that needed directive interactions had been rarely used.