Religious language and speech acts theory: An essay in application

The thesis is an inquire into the possibility of applying the theory of speech acts to the religious langugage particularly to the Qur'an. Our thesis consists of an introduction, two chapters and a conclusion. In the introduction part, an evaluation has been made about the philosophy of language and speech acts in general. Again, in the introduction, following the Austinian and Searlean lines of speech acts, the conditions for the achievement of a speech act, propositional acts, and illocutionary force are discussed. Then, it gives general information about the main problem, purpose, importance, possibilities and limitations of the thesis, the emergence of the speech acts theory, the development of speech acts. Again, in the introduction, what the religious language is and what it refers to and the possibility of speech acts in the religious language are dealt with concisely. In the first part of our thesis, the information about the religious language and the linguistic features of the Qur'an has been examined. In the second part of our thesis, the theory of speech acts has been applied to the religious language (the Qur'an) by revealing the specific aspects of the religious language. In practice, some additional situations or conditions arising from the religious language have been introduced, and the suitability of the theory to the language has been demonstrated within the framework of new situations. In the conclusion part, a relevant evaluation has been made about whether the theory of speech acts can be applied to the religious language and, if applicable, to what extent it has succeeded.