Investigating the translation of Speech Acts in Iraqi dialect with reference to Gha ibTu’ma Farman’s Novel, the Palm Tree and the Neighbors

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis to the forms and functions related to different speech acts in Iraqi local dialect with referring to Gha’ib Tu’ma Farman’s novel, The Palm Tree and The Neighbor, as a model. The main concern will be the taxonomy of speech acts in Iraqi local dialect through the translation of the late Fadhil Abbas al-Musawi, verbs in this text in accordance with Austin's theory had been classified into performative and constative translated from Arabic into English. Some verbs may lead directly to sheer immediate actions and others may lead to later actions, still others may not lead to any action in specific cases. Mostly in these dialogues, the Iraqi local dialect has been literally shifted into the equivalents of the informal English language and daily conversation. Through the analysis, there is a concentration on how the three meanings of performative acts, according to Austin classified pragmatically into locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. These acts in discourse have been employed in developing the conversational communication between characters.  Thus, In the field of pragmatics, the focus of this theory is achieving actions by utterances and to be in contact with others. Translating various speech acts will give a clear explanation to this fundamental topic in both languages in the syntactic and semantic dimensions like, for example demonstrating their social functions. The use of speech acts in the local dialect has its unique characteristic features like the repeated employment of condemn and the use of commands and requests more than other acts. The study approved the possibility of substituting most of the utterances in Iraqi local dialects with others in the target language.