Investigating the Speech Acts of President Rouhani s speeches on Iranian Nuclear Power

This study aimed at shedding light on the use of speech acts in political discourse, in general, and in the speeches of Iranian president Mr. Rouhani. To reach this aim, ten speeches delivered by this politician were analyzed based on the speech act framework. In addition to the descriptive statistics, the data were subjected to Chi-square statistical analysis for the significance of the differences regarding the use of speech acts in the speeches. The results indicated that the politician frequently used assertive speech acts in his speeches. Other types of speech acts were also used in the speeches; however, assertives were the most frequent ones. In fact, Rouhani tended to use more expressives. It is hoped that the insights gained from this study will contribute to the development of more inclusive pedagogical materials for EFL students and scholars.