A Comparative Study of Declarative Performative in Persian and Arabic Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the science which evaluates the eloquence of discourse. Through the rules of this science, any discourse is evaluated as to three aspects of Ma’ani (rhetorical figures), Bayan (utterance) and Badi’ (figures of speech). Ma’ani is one of the main branches of rhetoric which studies different aspects of a sentence such as its secondary meanings and its relevance to the situation. Persian scholars of rhetoric have always paid attention to Arabic rhetorical books. Negligence of grammatical and rhetorical differences between Persian and Arabic has led to some mistakes regarding definitions, divisions and examples. The category Enshaye Gheire Talabi (declaratives in the form of performative or a performative with declarative interpretation) is one of the issues which has not been defined and delineated clearly in rhetorical books.Analyzing such a category in the field of Ma’ani, this study aims at explaining its position with regard to grammatical and semantic characteristics of various kinds of performatives.