Deploying the Directive pattern to influence and persuasion in political correspondence in the Abbasid era – a pragmatic study

Abstract

Political discourse in cases of conflict and disputes adapts multiple linguistic practices in order to influence, try to persuade and achieve the desired goals. The research seeks to benefit from Pragmatics efforts in analyzing political discourse and contributing to the detection of the mechanisms of influence and persuasion in it, which is based on the fact that the real meaning is revealed and analyzed in the area of use, and we will focus on the “Intentionally Direction” in the analysis.

John Austin’s Speech Act Theory shows interest in discourse purposes, linking them to higher patterns of speech act that can be narrowed to and analyzed in linguistically, and Austin provided a model of analysis of these patterns, in which John Searle modified and that I will rely on in this research.

In this research, I will focus on analyzing the “Directive Pattern”, which is one of the five patterns of speech acts proposed by Searle, in political correspondence in the Abbasid era, and revealing his deployment to it in the process of influence and persuasion, and the research also seeks to test the effectiveness of this analytical model in analyzing political discourse.