RELEVANCE AND SPEECH ACTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF CONVERSATIONS BY 2 nd YEAR IRAQI EFL LEARNERS AT AL- NISOUR UNIVERSITY COLLEGE Aalaa Yaseen Hassan (1) and Mahasin Abdulqadir Hasan (2) (1), (2) College of Languages, Al-Nisour University College, Baghdad/Iraq Email: alaa.y.english@nuc.edu.iq Email: mahasin11@yahoo.com Abstract This study aims at investigating the type of difficulties faced by Iraqi EFL learners at Al-Nisour University College in their quest for the most appropriate utterance to express their ideas. One of the problems that face learners of language is that they do not use the language in real-life situations outside the classroom. The teachers must have the ability to convey the language as close to the native speaker's as possible by being aware of the necessity of being relevant when they communicate with their students who are not in direct contact with native speakers. Actually, to convey the idea effectively and with least mental effort, the learners of the language have to understand how to use direct and indirect way to get the right meaning when learning English as a second language. Keywords: relevance theory; relevant utterance; direct speech; indirect speech. 1. Introduction The major concern of this study is to examine the type of difficulties faced by learners in deciding the most appropriate utterance to convey their ideas. In order express the idea with more contextual effects and with less mental effort, the learners of the language need to understand the concept of relevance which is introduced by Sperber and Wilson (1986) who state that "human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance". Direct and indirect speech acts are used in this study as the principles that have to be used by the learners in order to solve the decision problem when they choose the relevant utterance. The test revealed that most learners used the direct way to determine the appropriate choice. Still, most learners face difficulties in saying what exactly is inside their minds as relevant as possible when they give the reason behind choosing the right alternative. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no previous research has ever tackled the topic of relevance and speech acts in the analysis of conversations by EFL learners from the perspective of a relevance-based approach to speech acts. Hence, this study is intended to close a gap between second language knowledge and communicative needs. 2. Relevance Theory Relevance Theory (henceforth RT) is propounded by Sperber and Wilson (1986) which is regarded as one of the significant theories. Sperber and Wilson reduced Grice's four maxims into one principle, namely the principle of relevance. “Grice's maxims can be replaced by a single principle of relevance - that the speaker tries to be as relevant as possible…” (1986: 381). PAIDEUMA JOURNAL Issn No : 0090-5674 Vol XII Issue 10 2019 http://pjrpublication.com/ 139