Pragmatic Analysis of Textbooks on the Basis of Speech Acts

Abstract

This study investigatesfive speech acts of declaratives ,expressives, representatives, directives and commisives in three English textbooks at the level of III, IV and V published by Punjab Text Book Board Lahore in order to show whether theyareappropriate on pragmatic level for EFL learners or not. The results of the study reveal that thedistribution of all the speech acts is not equal both within each textbook andamong textbooks at all three levels. Among five speech acts, representative speech act occursthe most frequently in all textbooks while commissiveis the least used speech act. None of the books uses any speech act of declarative. This study implies that EFL teachers and materials designers shouldconsider pragmaticaspectsto improve the quality of both learning and instruction.