Textual Analysis of Imam Riza's Pilgrimage Letter according to the Speech Act Theory

The speech act theory is one of the most important theories influencing the two fields of philosophy of language and language of religion. John Austin, who introduced this theory, says that speech act is an act that is performed by making an utterance, as the issuing of a warning, the making of a promise, or the giving of a greeting. He said that it is the performance of the speech act that constitutes the basic unit of linguistic communication. On the basis of this theory, John Searle classified speech acts under five categories: representative, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Textual analysis of this letter of pilgrimage showed that among 107 speech acts used in this text, there are 38 expressive acts, making this kind of speech act the most abundant ones in the text. And there are 22 declarations making them the least abundant ones. Also, it should be noted that no commisive speech act has been used in this text. The above results show a profound relation between the speaker of the pilgrimage letter and his audience. As a matter of fact, in this text, the speaker has tried to convey his emotions such as sincerity, appreciation, and friendship, to the audience. Negligible difference between the numbers of other speech acts used in this text, when compared to the total speech acts used, does not seem to be significant.