Studies in Literature and Language
Thematic Roles and Grammatical Features of Cursing and Blessing Speech Acts in Kurdish (Ilami Dialect)
Abstract
Cursing and blessing are two common speech acts seen in many languages. Due to specific nature of these expressions, many linguistic and non-linguistic (e.g. religious) arguments have been proposed in order to study and scrutinize these structures from different perspectives. This article aims to analyze cursing and blessing speech acts in Ilami dialect of Kurdish. In this paper both structural and semantic components of Ilami cursing and blessing will be discussed. Since the communicative role of such expressions is of great importance, we tried to distinguish the theta roles of cursing and blessing like agent, patient, function, goal and cause of such speech acts. Results show that blessing and especially cursing are very diverse in this dialect and they can serve several functions and goals while uttered but there can be seen some more frequent patterns in these utterances. It was also concluded that cursing and blessing share some common grammatical features. Affected by cultural and social factors, a large number of cursing and blessing expressions are no longer understood literally and they should be treated as idiomatic expressions.
Key words: Kurdish; Speech acts; Cursing; Blessing; Thematic roles; Grammatical features
Keywords
References
Blum-Kulka, S. (1980). Learning to Say What You Mean in a Second Language: A Study of Speech Act Performance of Learners of Hebrew as a Second Language (pp. 1-60).
Crystal, D. (2003). A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics (5th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Press.
Kalbassi, I. (2010). A Descriptive Dictionary of Linguistic Varieties in Iran. Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran.
Kurdish Language (2012). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/325225/Kurdish-language
Meijers, A. (1994). Speech Acts, Communication and Collective Intentionality: Beyond Searle’s Individualism. Leiden: Rijksuniversiteit.
Mulligan, K. (1987). Promisings and Other Social Acts: Their Constituents and Structure. In Mulligan (Ed.), Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the Foundations of Realist Phenomenology (pp. 29-90). The Hague: Nijhoff.
Sabuhi Khamene, L. (2010). Analysis of the Cursing and Blessing as Speech Acts in Persian (Unpublished master’s thesis). Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran.
Schuhmann, K. & Smith, B. (1990). Elements of Speech Act Theory in the Work of Thomas Reid. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 7(1), 47-66.
Searle, J.R. (1965). What is a Speech Act? In Max Black (Ed.), Philosophy in America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press; London: Allen and Unwin.
Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J.R. (1975). A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts. In K. Gunderson (Ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science), 7, 344-369; Reprinted in Searle (Ed.), Experience and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (1975, pp. 1-29). Cambridge: Cambridge university Press.
Smith, B. (1990). Towards a History of Speech Act Theory. In A. Burkhardt (Ed.), Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions: Critical Approaches to the Philisophy of John R. Searle (pp. 29-61). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
Yule, G. (2000). Pragmatics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c)
Share us to: 
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard
Reminder
How to do online submission to another Journal?
If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org
Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 
