Abstract:
Language is a very important tool that is used by man to communicate messages, ideas andsocietal values. It had been claimed, however, that language used in Islamic religious sermonshad negative effects on the audience. However, no research had been conducted to confirm the claim and establish the extent of the effects of the language used in those sermons. This study, therefore, investigated the effects of the language of khutuba on the faithfuls who listen to these Friday sermons. The objectives of the study were to establish speech acts in Friday sermons and their effects on believers who profess Islam. The study was intended to answer specific research questions namely; do Friday sermons have specific speech acts, do those speech acts affect listeners in certain ways and what recommendendations could be suggested to ensure that speech acts with positive effects, preferred by the listenership are used in the sermons?. The study was guided by the Speech Acts Theory and supplemented by the Implicature Theory. Speech acts and opinions of listeners as regards the Friday sermons formed data for the research. The data was collected from Khutubas delivered in mosques in Eastern Uganda i.e. Mbale, Sironko, Manafa and Bududa districts. Participant observation method was used in data collection. This entailed tape recording 30 sermons from 30 Mosques and taking notes regarding paralinguistic features in the sermons. In addition, 30 Imams who represent 10% of the total number of Imams in mosques found in the area under study and 108 faithfuls were purposively selected. The taped sermons were transcribed and speech acts identified. Thereafter, respondents were contacted and interviewed regarding the intention and effects of the speech acts identified from the sermons. The data was analyzed using simple descriptive statistics to show the frequency distribution of speech acts emerging from the sermons and the findings were described and interpreted using the qualitative method. The study is a contribution to the area of discourse analysis. Speech acts in Friday sermons were identified. The study revealed that the speech acts had negative effects on the believers who listened to the sermons and recommended the use of speech acts that believers seemed to prefer as a measure of preventing inflammatory utterances that might cause conflicts in society.
