Vol. 16, Issue 1, Jul-Dec 2023

Page: 132-146

A Stylistic Study of Compliment Speech Act in Shakespeares Julius Caesar

Abdullah Najim Abd Al Khanaifsawy

Received Date: 2021-09-01

Accepted Date: 2021-10-04

Published Date: 2021-10-14

The present research investigates the speech act of ‘compliment’ in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” stylistically. The paper aims at finding what kinds of compliments are employed in the play and what syntactic types of sentences utilized for showing the act of compliment in the targeted text. The study is limited to the speech act of ‘compliment’ and the text of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” as well. The problem of the study is that most Iraqi EFL learners find it challenging to test the speech act of compliment with the Felicity Condition rules. Also, they might confuse the speech act of compliment with other similar related speech acts such as ‘praising’. From this point, the present paper has been conducted to an answer the research questions that are: 1) What is the speech act of compliment, 2) What are the structures of the speech act of compliment used in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, and 3) What kinds of compliments (direct or indirect ones) that Shakespeare has mastered in his play “Julius Caesar”. Regarding the hypothesis of the research, it is hypothesized that the employment of the speech act of compliment in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar” meets or satisfies the Felicity Conditions of speech act. The paper ends up with some findings and conclusion, some of which are that the use of direct compliment becomes part of the rhetorical ability of the characters to persuade the hearer and convince him to behave in a certain way, and Shakespeare utilizes more direct compliments compared to the indirect ones due to the consideration that this act is face-saving act.

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