Discourse of leadership and management: A pilot empirical study of commissive speech acts

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Kuwait University

Abstract

Any leader needs, now and then, to make commitments. These commitments are themselves a test for trustworthy leaders. The current pilot study employs the speech act theory to explore how organizational leaders make commitments in an Arab government workplace- Kuwait. The language diary, which was found by previous literature to be a solid method, was used to gather data about commissive acts made by leaders. The diary method. The results were: (1) 95% of the commissive acts were explicit not implicit; and (2) the commissive acts were diverse due to diverse situations. Then, the study concluded with three relevant recommendations: (1) it is crucial for leaders to be aware of commissives and of their impact on leaders’ image and trustworthiness before others; (2) training leaders to properly apologize when necessary in matters that go beyond their discretionary power; and (3) further empirical research is needed to shed light on the relationship between language, and leadership and management.

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