Illocutionary Force in Grant Proposal Writing in Thi-Qar Province

In 2003 a drastic change started to take place in the Iraqi society , in which new community-minded institutions , such as the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) , initiated their activities of implementing projects in different fields of work . An essential part of work in any one of these organizations is to submit project proposals , competing with others to gain grants for funding these projects . This task of writing a grant proposal , which is commonly assigned to Iraqi staff who only know English , is a skill which may have been developed a lot during the past five years in Thi-Qar ( a southern Iraqi province of approximately two million population , having tens of NGOs working ). Whatever the layout a grant proposal may take , it generally contains five parts : the introduction in which a problem or a need is presented , an overview section which defines the process and the procedure to follow for implementing the project and the expected results , a work plan or a schedule , a detailed budget , and a personnel section .The first two parts (introduction and overview) are presented as English texts and constitute the linguistic load as the body of the proposal , whereas the last three indicate numbers and staff qualifications . Being an offer-like text written for competition and reward winning , a well-written grant proposal , particularly its first two parts (introduction overview) , is certainly more than describing a project work-plan in an English text but is greatly expected to follow a succinct and effective language style which could attract the donor s attention and convince him/her that it is important , interesting , productive and ultimately competitive .