Speech Act of Criticism in Kurdish: A Pragmatic Study

Abstract

Speech acts composes a big part of language; it is one of the bases of pragmatics, it can be defined as the use of language to make things happen in the world. The aim of the study is to investigate the strategies of the speech act of criticism in Kurdish. One hundred twenty undergraduate native Kurdish speaking students were selected as a sample for the study. The students were of different majors, sexes and social classes. Discourse Completion Test (DCT) approach is adopted in collecting the data which has 10 scenarios. The test has been carried out at Salahaddin and Koya universities. After the data collection, strategies of criticizing have been classified in terms of Nguyen 2005 model. The results of the investigation show that Kurds would rather employ indirect strategies than direct strategies to give criticism.