American International Journal of Social Science

Illocutionary Forces of Interrogatives in Arabic and English: An Analytical Survey
Dr. Salah N. Al-Najjar

Abstract
This study aims at achieving a two- fold objective: firstly, it attempts to examine the syntactic sources of interrogatives in both Arabic and English which, in their different types are semantically specified: each of which is used for a major particular intention i.e. to seek information or to assert or negate it. Secondly, it surveys different other intentions which usually go beyond the seeking-information intention to become pertinent to the speakers’ intentions. Such intentions are explicated and classified in accordance with the interpretations constituted in their different illocutionary forces brought about by the different illocutionary acts in both languages since these acts are viewed as an instance of culturally- defined speech acts types. Searle (1975) says that such types are used to communicate/ reciprocate the speech acts in different situations. The intended force of certain sentences or utterances is sometimes not obvious, but what is quite obvious to speakers of a language is that the interrogatives, for example, are supposed to indicate questions. In this regard, Searle and Vanderveken (1985) introduced what they term as ‘illocutionary force indicating devices’ (IFIDs) by means of which the utterance is made with a certain illocutionary force. Thus, interrogatives may go beyond the seeking- information intentions to become pertinent to the speakers’ intentions. The IFIDs are elements of linguistic devices which include word order, stress, intonation, punctuation and performative verbs which are resorted to when interrogative sentences/ utterances are taken up.

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