Types of Speech Acts in the Apostrophe Device based on John Searle's Theory; a Case Study of Āyāt al-ʾAḥkām in the Holy Quran

"Apostrophe" (Iltifāt) means grammatical altering between the use of first, second, and third person in a sentence or consecutive sentences. It aims at examining the coherence in the Holy Quran. Speech act theory is one of the important topics in pragmatics. It conveys that a conversation includes many acts such as description, declaration, command, prohibition, prayer, wish, etc. Considering a text as an act enables religious texts experts to change the nature of the texts more systematically. John Searle is one of the theorists of this area. He has classified speech acts into representatives, directives, commissives, expressive, and declarations. In this study, based on his theory, as a linguistic discourse analysis, and by using a descriptive-analytical method, the text and context of Iltifāt verses in the Holy Quran have been examined, and the type of their acts were identified. According to the results, regarding Searle's five speech acts, in these verses, the representative and commissive acts have been used more and less than other types, respectively. Also, the verbs used in each of these speech acts are as follows: describing, emphasizing, reporting, criticizing, and granting in the representative act, offering, making a condition, asking for explanation, protestingly asking, etc. in the directive act, giving and making a pledge, and swearing in the commissive act, praising, thanking, threatening, wishing, etc. in the expressive act, and terminating and judging in the declaration act.