A Speech Act Analysis of some English and Arabic Proverbs

Abstract

The present paper is furnished to analyze the speech acts of the English and Arabic proverbs. Proverbs refer to culture- specific matters and they imply metaphorical meanings. They might offer an advice or give a warning, threatening or promising. Some speakers tend to use a proverb implying warning, for the purpose of brevity, instead of giving a long or short explanation about the danger of the situation. This, in fact, proves that the proverbs do not convey the literal meanings of their constituents rather they just convey messages such as warning, advising, threatening, promising, etc. Thus, this paper seeks to classify these metaphorical / indirect meanings in terms of types of speech acts.