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Trends of Pragmatics in English and Arabic

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 Trends of Pragmatics in English and Arabic

By:

Prof. Dr. Mohammed Jasim Betti & Prof. Dr. Zainab Kadim Igaab
Dept. of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of
Thi-Qar, Nasiriya, Iraq.

Linguistically, the Arabic origin of the word 'al-tadawiliyyah' was

derived from the linguistic root 'dwal' which occurred in many linguistic
dictionaries like 'Measures of Language', 'The Arabs' Tongue'. At that
time, linguists used that term in different contexts to express different
meanings like 'andala al- qawm' (They moved from one place into
another). (One gives another a thing). Another use was 'tadawalna 'al-
'amr' or 'dawalik' (They discussed the matter among each other). Another
use is 'dawala Allah al- 'ayam bayna 'al- nas' (Allah manages the days
among people).
.041 ‫(وتلك االيام وداولها بيه الىاس) (سىرة ال عمران) االيه‬
(Hussein, 2020: 3; Bolkhtot, 2018: 108-111; Al-Hasan, 2013: 245; Ibn-
Mandhoor, 1994: 252-253; Ibn-Faris, 1991: 258; ; mu'jam allugha al-
Arabiya, 1989: 304 and Al-Zamkhashary, 1966: 288).
The word 'al-tadawiliya' consists of two morphemes: 'al-tadawil'
which is taken from the verb 'tadawala' on the measure 'tafai'la', carrying
the meaning of the participation and the second morpheme is the attached
pronoun which refers to the scientific and systematic aspect (Dhubi',
2015: 3).
Pragmatics is a modern science but the search is so old. It was first
derived from Greek (pragmaticus) which was used by the Greek
philosophers since the old periods of time to mean 'science' (Khalil, 1996:
196). Later on, that word was taken to Latin and then to Arabic with
various interpretations 'al-tabaduliyah, al-itisaliyah, al-nafi'yah, al-
Tarai'yah' (Al-Riwily, and Al-Bazighy, 2000: 102).
Researchers paid much attention to that science because it dealt with
how the language was used to make an interaction between the sender
and the receiver. Then Grice established general principles for the
cooperation between the speakers and the hearers in a conversation.
Charles Morris distinguished among syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
The latter studied the symbols and the things which were referred to; and
the words and the things. So, pragmatics studied how the conversation
was successfully performed either by talking or signaling. The
philosopher, Charles Sandres Peirce, maded a noticeable development in
the linguistic and philosophical aspects. Pragmatics was connected with
logic, and then with semiotics. The first pragmatic features appeared with
the appearance of the essay "How to make our Ideas Clear" in 1878 and
the second "What's Pragmatics?" in 1905 (Mudawar, 2014: 31 and
Dalash, 1986: 18-19).
The dictionary meanings made the Arab philosophers and linguists
like Taha Abdul- Rahman (2000: 28) reveal the word 'al-tadawiliyat' in
correspondence with the English word 'pragmtique' in 1970.
The first roots of pragmatics could be found in the analytic
philosophy which was a philosophical aspect that focused on the topic of
language. That philosophy tried to change its task, topic, and practices to
deal with language. So, it revolutionized against the classic philosophy
(metaphysical and natural) to make the tasks of philosophy investigate in
language. Its founder was G. Frege who was followed by E. Hussrel,
Carnap, Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle. They agreed among each other
on that the human could understand himself and the world on the basis of
language. Analytic philosophy was divided into three types: one was first
led by Carnap; the second by Hussrel; and the third which was the normal
language philosophy by Wittengentein. That last philosophy helped to
make speech act theory appear (I'zaddin and Mukhtar, 2018: 5-6).
Pragmatics as a concept is the science of language use. It is the study
of the context-dependent meaning. It is the study of the speaker's
intended meaning.
Rapidly, pragmatics is a growing field in contemporary linguistics.
Recently, it becomes a centre of intense interest in linguistics and the
philosophy of language. It attracts the attention from anthropologists,
artificial intelligence workers, cognitive scientists, psychologists and
semioticians. It includes some central topics like implicature,
presupposition, speech acts, and deixis (Huang, 2007: 1-2).
Among the central questions of philosophy is how our world and
lives are interpreted as being meaningful. Language is one of the most
important tools which is used to do this. In linguistics, there is a field
which studies how speakers use their language to generate specific
meanings in specific contexts. This is regarded as an introduction in
which philosophy meets semantics and pragmatics (Senft, 2014: 11).
Pragmatics works on how the language is connected to the real
world. It is of a role in legal linguistics. It is a significant source in law.
Law can be seen or viewed pragmatically in terms of speech act theory
(Ramakrishra, 2015: 1-3).
With the scientific acclaim, it is still ambiguous and difficult to
define the notion of pragmatics. People who behave pragmatically prefer
a practical rather than theoretical; realistic than speculative and idealistic
way of approaching near imminent troubles and dealing with everyday
affairs. What is concrete is tended to rather than what is abstract. Two
viewpoints on pragmatics are: a) according to the narrow view,
"pragmatics is understood as the systemic investigation of what and how
people mean when they use language as a vehicle of action in a particular
context and with a particular goal in mind". But its central idea is the
dependency of the utterance meaning on the context (Bublitz and
Norrick, 2011: 3).
Pragmatics emphasizes its relation with grammar and semantics.
Broadly, patterns of linguistic actions, language functions, types of
inferences, principles of communication, frames of knowledge, attitude
and belief, and organizational principles of text and discourse are
contained in pragmatics. Meaning in context is concerned with from
different perspectives like the speaker, the recipient, the analyst, etc, for
analytical purposes. The gap between language and its use is bridged in
pragmatics which relates both at the same time. In addition, in everyday
communication, understanding any utterance relies on the conventional
symbols used by speakers to communicate and our knowledge we have
about speakers and the situation where an utterance is made. So, by
knowledge, the speaker's intention to convey is to be revealed (Algburi,
and Igaab, 2021: 42).
Igaab (2021: 83) believes that concerning the term 'pragmatics', there
is a correspondence between English and Arabic. The Western
scientists' efforts and the ancient Arabs' are complementary in terms of
the study of pragmatics. Likewise, English and Arabic agree on the
locutionary, illocutionary, and perolcutionary acts. The same is with
direct and indirect speech acts, but they are different from each other in
terms of the way of classifying speech acts (Ibid).
Researchers in pragmatics work in all areas of linguistics (and
beyond), but from a distinctive perspective which makes their works in
pragmatics result in new findings and reinterprets the old ones (Bublitz
and Norrick, 2011: 4).
Pragmatics as a linguistic concept deals with the communicative
action and its felicity in context. That action is investigated in terms of
the questions of what action is, what may count as action, what action is
composed of, what conditions need to be satisfied for action to be
felicitous, and how action is related to context. Those research questions
and the object of research need action in general and communicative
action in particular to be noticed of as relational concepts, relating action
and context, relating action and communicative action, relating
communicative action and interlocutors, and relating interlocutors to the
things they do with words in context (Fetzer, 2011: 23).
At the beginning of this new century, there is a clear move from
overwhelmingly monolingual and monocultural research paradigms to a
kind of research that finds its goals in the multilingual and multicultural
interaction of speakers who are from different national, ethnic, and racial
backgrounds. So, during the era of globalization, communication is to
become increasingly cross-cultural since it includes interactants with
different cultures, different conceptualizations, and different first
languages. They have a grammatically common language or lingua-
franca but their instrument of communication is pragmatically different.
That communication stands for different cultures, norms, and values.
Languages are pragmatically different from each other in various issues
like speech acts, implicature, impoliteness, etc. There has been a focus on
the contrastive patterns of pragmatic features, concepts. Thus, researchers
have been interested so much in contrastive pragmatics (Pṻtz and
Aertselaer, 2009: ix-x).

Some researchers study pragmatics in relation to forensic linguistics.

Igaab (2021) investigates the pragmatics of blackmail in English and
Iraqi-Arabic. It concludes that blackmail is expressed by a limited
number of illocutionary verbs which are ' threaten, publish, reveal,
blackmail, tell, attack, post, expose, drop, disclose, had'. Similarly, in
Arabic, blackmail is expressed by a limited number of illocutionary verbs
which are 'threaten, publish, harm, expose, blackmail, tell'. Those
verbs have the same perlocutionary effect which is the negative effect on
the victim (Igaab, 2021: 83).

In Igaab (2022: 33), it is proved that in Arabic, defamation, insult and

verbal abuse belong to the same type but they are independent crimes
from each other. In English, threat, insult and abuse are altogether
included in more than one legal clause of the Criminal Code for England
by the Law Commission No. 177 (1989). In both languages, insulting is
done for the officials at their departments or institutes but in English
(British and American) communities, most insulting cases are done
because of race discrimination and religion. Many insults are not paid
attention to by people because of speech freedom. In Iraq, there are
restrictions on the speech. Every person should be responsible for what
he/she is saying.

In so far as speech acts are concerned, the types of speech acts spring
from a macro speech act and their types depend on the language under
study. For example, the micro speech acts which exist in the English
bribery are requesting, agreeing (accepting), denying, promising and
offering while in the Arabic bribery, they are offering and agreeing
(Algburi and Igaab, 2021: 56).
Some studies investigate some speech acts in English and Arabic. For
example, Betti and Igaab (2018) study modulation in both English and
Arabic contrastively. It concludes that in English, obligation is referred to
by sentences (declarative, interrogative), nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
modals while in Arabic, it is expressed by lexical verbs, prepositions
followed by a pronoun, particles, warning or condition, in addition to
other constructions like verb + preposition. In addition, the devices which
are used to express permission in English are lexical verbs, nouns,
adjectives, modals, and imperative sentences while in Arabic, it is
indicted by lexical verbs, invocation particles, particles, alhamza+ verb,
preposition + pronoun, an imperative sentence. Likewise, there are two
devices to express willingness in English which are modal verbs and be
willing to but in Arabic, there is a number of the devices: lexical verbs,
nouns, particles, invocation, and other expressions (Betti and Igaab, 2018:
41).
Some researchers study pragmatics in relation to political discourse.
Betti and Ghadhab (2020) is a pragma-dialectical study of the
argumentative indicators as used in American electoral campaign debates.
The topic in question has not received sufficient attention by researchers.
The study aims at investigating Trump's argumentative indicators and
their functions in his electoral campaign debates, investigating Clinton's
argumentative indicators and their functions in her debates, and finding
out the similarities and differences between Trump and Clinton in the use
of argumentative indicators and their functions. The study concludes that
Both Trump and Clinton use the argumentative indicators of
confrontation stage (propositional attitude, force modifying, and dispute
indicators), both of them utilize the argumentative indicators of
coordinative argumentation, they take the role of 'protagonist' who tries to
defend his or her viewpoint, they use two arguments to support their
viewpoints because sometimes one argument is not enough to make their
ideas stronger, Clinton uses two arguments" fighting ISIS in Syria ,"and"
removing Assad from his position "to strength her standpoint" fighting
terrorists, and Trump shows two different arguments" fighting ISIS in
Syria and Iraq "and" there is no need to fight Assad because the latter is
fighting ISIS in Syria "to support his opinion" fighting terrorists (Betti
and Ghadhab (2020: 69).
Some researchers study some aspects of pragmatics stylistically. For
example, Betti and Khalaf (2021) makes a pragma-stylistic study of
implicature in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Implicature is
studied in the above literary texts. The study concludes that Implicature is
mainly generated by violating Grice's maxims, most of the cases of
implicatures are made by violating the maxim of quality in the two plays,
the most used type of implicature is the generalized conversational one,
generation of implicatures by the characters in the two plays is highly
determined by social factors, that is, the implicatures used in Hamlet are
more sophisticated than the ones used in Twelfth Night. In Hamlet the
social factors are determined by the royal state of the main characters
while in Twelfth Night the dominant atmosphere is that of servants and
uneducated people despite the fact that the main characters are high class
nobles, and using implicatures may either indicate the character's
politeness or rudeness. In Hamlet, even though Hamlet is so angry at his
mother, his speech is polite and respectful because of the status that
combines the two characters.

Other researchers investigate some other pragmatic topics in

education, for example, Betti, Igaab & Al-Ghizzi (2018) study the Iraqi
EFL learners’ use of permission, obligation and prohibition. The study
concludes that the subjects' performance at the recognition and
production levels do not reveal a moderate mastering of permission,
obligation and prohibition. In spite of that, their recognition level is better
than their production and they have weaknesses at the pragmatic level of
the selected directives (Betti, Igaab & Al-Ghizzi, 2018: 251).
Likewise, Betti and Yaseen (2020) measure the Iraqi EFL learners' use
of conversational maxims at the recognition level. The study concludes
that the Iraqi EFL learners have difficulty in utilizing the conversational
maxims when they are required to fulfill all the maxims and breach up all
the maxims of conversation when they are exposed to situations from real
life in relatively different degrees (Betti and Yaseen (2020: 58).
Similarly, Betti and Hasan (2020) investigates the Iraqi EFL learners’
ability to use Speech Acts (SAs) in MA and Ph.D. theses defense. It aims
at analyzing the utterances made by the MA and Ph.D. IEFL learners in
terms of speech acts, the class to which those acts belong, the type of
tone the learners use, and the errors committed by the learners and their
types. The study concludes that the most frequent SA that the MA and
Ph.D. IEFL learners perform in their defense of their theses and
dissertations is the SA of asserting. In addition, the most frequently used
category of SAs by the MA and Ph.D. IEFL learners in their defense is
the representative, directive, expressives, commissive and then the
declarative one. Similarly, the Ph.D. IEFL learners utilize more SA
categories in their defense than the MA ones do. This is because the
Ph.D. IEFL learners utilize SAs which belong to four SA categories,
whereas the MA ones use SAs which belong to only three SA categories
(Betti and Hasan, 2020: 61-2).
Betti and Yousif (2022) studies the Iraqi undergraduates' recognition
of Leech's politeness principle. The study concludes that the EFL
learners' flouting of the maxims of politeness principle in the recognition
question is more than their observance of such maxims. This is because
of a number of reasons including the lack of EFL practice, the lack of
pragmatic competence and neglecting the contextual factors. In addition,
the participants' performance in recognizing the maxims of politeness
principle is much less than the average and this is because of a number of
reasons including the lack of EFL practice, the lack of pragmatic
competence and neglecting the contextual factors (Betti and Yousif ,
2022: 115).
Salman and Betti (2020) investigates politeness and face threatening
acts in Iraqi EFL learners’ conversations. After surveying the review of
literature and the students’ responses by using Brown and Levinson’s
(1987), Roberts(1992) and Hoebe (200) models, it is concluded that:
1. Negative politeness is the most frequent politeness strategy used by the
university students’ in the conversations with their teacher. This shows
that students pay more attention in using politeness strategies during
formal conversations using expressions like “ I am sorry” “excuse me”
“please” which expresses a lot of awareness to H’s face.
2. There is a misuse concerning using face threatening acts and politeness
strategies by EFL learners due to their lack of training i.e. students use
more polite strategies in an informal conversations and they use less
polite strategies in formal conversations.
3. The most sub-strategies and face threatening acts used by the students
with negative politeness strategy are: Apology, using hedges, giving
deference and being optimistic.
4. The most sub-strategies and face threatening acts used by the students
with off record strategy are: reminding, contradictions, being ironic,
giving hints and giving association clues.
5. According to their culture, the Iraqi EFL learners differentiate between
the social relationship of friends and colleagues and they use more
politeness with their colleagues (Salman and Betti, 2020: 230-1).

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