چكيده عربي :
This study mainly investigates pragmatic comprehension of speech acts where recipients fail tointerpret the intended illocutionary force. The problem of thestudy concerns the question why a recipient is sometimesunable to identify the illocution on the basis of the locution.This is due as hypothesized by the researcher, to therecipient s dependence on specific information rather than ongeneral information, failure of drawing meaning from givencontext, and lack of cognitive control over proceduralknowledge. The procedures followed in conducting this studyare based on: (1) Exploring meaning of relevant terms. (2)Investigating causes and effects of the problem underdiscussion. (3) Verifying findings. (4) Drawing conclusions.Section One of this paper both introduces and discussessome relevant concepts that help reveal aspects of meaning,type and function of pragmatic comprehension with a majorfocus on recipients failure to recognize the intended messageof indirect speech acts.Section Two, on the other hand, explores the process ofinterpreting indirect speech acts and phatic utterances. In thissection, the Schemata Theory Approach, also known as the Frame Theory , is examined. According to this theory,knowledge is organized in a hierarchical system, whichserves the process of pragmatic comprehension. Actually,general information is placed within the highest frames of thehierarchical system while specific information is placed at thebottom. The study ends up with the conclusions which showthat interpreting meaning in pragmatic comprehension isactually achieved by top-down or bottom-up processing ofinformation within the hierarchical system of knowledge, theidentification of illocutionary force by means of either onemeaning process or multiple meaning process plus theconventionality of context on the indirectness of speech acts.
