AN ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACTS IN NEWSPAPER NARRATIVES ON IMMIGRATION IN THE USA

The aim of this article is to explore the pragmatic dimensions of immigration within the newspapers narratives in the contemporary United States. It emphasizes immigration-focused newspapers that exhibit either overt or subtle forms of discrimination, prejudice, bias, and xenophobia. This research intends to perform a corpus analysis of immigration-related articles found in a collection of prominent American newspapers, utilizing the framework of four speech acts as proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979): Constatives (commitments to future actions), Directives (attempts to persuade the listener to take action), Commissives (a specific type of directive that involves a commitment to a future action), and Acknowledgments (expressions reflecting psychological states).This aim can be further expressed in the form of questions:What are the main categories and sub-categories of speech acts used by US Newspapers in their coverage (report) and shaping of public opinion in the United States on immigration issues? And what is the impact of coverage (report) of US Newspapers and shaping of public opinion in the US on immigration issues?