Analysis of simple and compound sentences of Sa’adi's sonnets based on Searle's speech act theory

Every speaker seeks influence and influence on her audience and chooses a method in this direction. As one of the most capable Persian speakers, Sa’adi's works contain various instructions for expressing the meaning. In the present study, the subject of the use of directive sentences and how to combine them with predicate sentences in Sa’adi's ghazal is discussed based on Searle's speech act theory.

This research is based on descriptive – analytical method. For this purpose, we first explain the theoretical foundations of Searle's speech act based on the five acts of assertive, commissive, expressive, declarative and directive with appropriate examples from Sa’adi's ghazal, then we focus on the directive act and show that Sa’adi's special style in expressing directive and frequency sentences and what is their audience like.

We found that there are 146 directive sentences in 126 verses in 100 ghazals that were chosen randomly. The audience of these verses were divided into five groups. Of the set of directive sentences, 101 sentences have compound construction. Out of 101 compound sentences, 65 sentences with the conjunction express the reason or in the sense of expressing the reason Also, from the point of view of audience, these sentences are addressed to five categories of audience.

Searle's speech act theory about sentences is consistent with what Sa’adi said in his sonnet sentences. He has achieved his own style by using the structure of "base clause plus Conjunction plus follower clause" with high frequency.