Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 9. Number 3. September 2018 Pp. 207-218
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no3.14
Speech Acts as Means of Argumentation in Bank’s Annual Reports
Fareed Hameed Al-Hindawi
English Department, College of Education for Human Sciences
University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq
Rana Naji
Department of Tourism, College of Tourism Sciences
Al- Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq
Abstract:
Argumentation is the process of changing others point of view and convincing them to do something or to think in a certain way. Different rhetoricians, like Toulmin (1958) and Aristotle (1984), define argumentation as merits of persuading or an attempt to give justifications. Giving that arguing can convince others to do or think in a certain way puts argumentation within the domain of the speech act theory. The current work aims at shedding light on argumentation from a speech act perspective, particularly in professional genre as banks annual reports. Precisely, the paper attempts to answer the question: “How are speech acts used in banks annual reports to convince clients, shareholders, and companies to collaborate with the bank?” A model of analysis is developed to identify the pragmatic techniques of arguing used by ARs (Annual Reports) writers to convince their readers. The data used in this paper consist of four bank’s ARs for the financial years of 2014 and 2015.
Keywords: argumentation, argumentative texts, bank’s annual reports, persuasion, speech acts
Cite as: Al-Hindawi, F.H., & Naji, R. (2018). Speech Acts as Means of Argumentation in Bank’s Annual ReportsArab World English Journal, 9 (3), 207-218.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol9no3.14