A Pragmatic Study of Indirect Warning in Boris Johnson's Speeches on COVID 19

Abstract

This study investigates how the prime minster of the United Kingdom employs language to express indirect warning in his speeches in order to warn his citizens to avoid corona virus infections , It aims to detect the act of warning embedded in his rhetoric through linguistic manipulation, and its impact on the audience so, the study aims the following Therefore, it hypothesizes the following:
 1-The speech act of warning is constructed by the declarative sentences more than the other forms in Johnson's speeches.
 2- Felicity Conditions are perfectly applied on the selected speeches.
 3-Indirect warning is more currently occurred than direct one.
 4-The hint strategy is more frequently occurred in the selected data than the conditional one as an indirect warning strategy.
 Speech Act Theory deals with the meaning of language use which is stated in terms of how the speaker manipulates the utterance to make the hearers infer the intended meaning. So, the data analysis will be dealt pragmatically. Therefore ,the study will try to answer the following questions:
 1-Indirect warning has certain basic strategies to deal with. So, the study will concentrate on these strategies.
 2-Does indirect Speech Act be more frequently used than direct one?
 3-which strategy is more frequently used in expressing the indirect warning?
 The study arrives at these conclusions: (1) All the hypotheses have been approved, (2) He never uses the questioning strategy as indirect one in the whole speeches, (3) He employs the indirect speech act of warning more than the direct one in order to force the audience to infer his intended meanings when he delivers his speeches, and (4) The speech act of warning in Johnson's speeches is used to direct people either to do beneficial action or avoid doing bad actions.