The Speech Act of Condoling in Iraqi Funeral Facebook Comments

Abstract

The present study aims to pragmatically analyse the speech act of condolence used by commenters on Iraqi funeral Facebook posts. Particularly, it sheds light on the pragmatic forms and functions of the speech act of condolence used as comments on Iraqi funeral Facebook posts. The theoretical background of pragmatics, speech act theory, the classification, definition and related studies of the speech act of condolence are presented in the present study. The researcher conducts descriptive and statistical methods when analysing the data. The current study finds that the form of Seeking God’s forgiveness is highly used by commenters to represent the speech act of condolence. It is concluded that the form of Seeking God’s forgiveness is the appropriate form to achieve the speech act of condolence, and the social distance variable has a crucial influence on the expressions used to achieve the speech act of condolence.