The application of the theory of speech acts in the reading of Masnavi's urban and rural stories

The use of new theories of linguistics in the analysis of literary texts has opened new perspectives for researchers in the field of Persian linguistics and literature. Searle's speech act theory is one of the important theories in the field of text analysis, which examines the secondary meanings of words according to the context of the speech. By examining the text from this point of view, one can understand the hidden angles of the text. In this sense, in this research, an attempt has been made to examine the speech acts of the urban and rural story of the Masnavi from the third book, which is based on the theory of John Searle (1979). Therefore, the present research has analyzed and described the frequency of speech acts in the mentioned story with the analytical-descriptive method and statistical approach. The results of the research showed that according to the themes and moral and mystical recommendations of Rumi's stories in the Masnavi, among Searle's five actions, the most frequent are direct and persuasive actions.