Speech Acts Used in Arabic Deceptive Advertisements

The present research deals with the Arabic deceptive language used by advertisers within a pragmatic framework. It tackles the problem related to the tricks used by advertisers in presenting their advertisements in an attempt to affect their consumers' perceptions. Thus, it aims to reveal the different types of speech acts used by advertisers in presenting their advertisements and the ways through which these presented speech acts can be effectively deceptive. It hypothesizes that different types of speech acts are used by advertisers in presenting their deceptive advertisements and the assertive speech act is the most frequent type of speech acts used by advertisers to fulfill their deceptive aim.To achieve the aim of the study and to test its hypotheses, two independent models have been adopted for data analysis. The first one is the "deception by implication" model by Hastak and Mazis (2011); it is concerned with identifying deceptive claims. This model has been applied to 400 advertisement claims related to different types of products collected through an observation method from different sources. The second model is represented by Searle's speech act theory (1979) ; it is concerned with identifying the different types of speech acts used in deceptive advertisements. The methodology of the study has been designed by following the exploratory mixed approach through which both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis have been applied to the collected data. The study has arrived at two conclusions: first, it concludes that all types of speech acts are used by advertisers in presenting their deceptive ads. The second conclusion reveals that assertive speech act is the most frequent type of speech acts used by advertisers in presenting their claims.