PROMISE AND THREAT IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC RELIGIOUS TEXTS: A PRAGMATIC TUDY

Abstract

1- The analysis shows that the SAs of promising andthreatening in both English and Arabic can be appliedto religious texts by analyzing their FCs. This meansthat religious texts can be regarded as acts of communication.2- It has been found that in most cases of English texts,the performative verbs of promising are expressed implicitlyby the modal verbs ‘will’ and ‘shall’ as well asthe conditional form; while in Arabic texts promisingis expressed explicitly as well as implicitly by differentlexical, semantic, and pragmatic forms. Thus one canconclude that the SA of promising is performed moreexplicitly in Arabic texts than in English.3- The study shows also that the SA of promising in Arabicculture does not always imply a commitment to dosomething to the H, as in English culture. Thus it canbe used for the purpose of terminating the conversationbetween the participants, and to satisfy culturalexpectations or to save face.4- As for the performative verb of threatening, the analysisshows that in both languages threat is mainly expressedimplicitly by different syntactic and semanticforms. This fact reveals that both languages have asimilar point of view as to the implicit nature of the A ofthreatening.5- The study finds out also that threat in both English andArabic cannot only be determined by the declarativeform since it can be expressed in more than one structuresuch as imperative, prohibitive, and interrogative.6- Concerning the tense of the performative verbs ofpromising and threatening, English and Arabic are differentin using the performative verbs. The study revealsthat English performative verbs of these two actscan be expressed only by using the present tense;while Arabic tends to use the present or/and the pasttense. Moreover, Arabic can use some past verbs toexpress a promise or a threat in given contexts.7- The study has arrived at a significant conclusion thatboth acts of promising and threatening have beenfound to be closely related in both languages since theA of threatening is derived from the same illocution,i.e., promising. It is also concluded that both acts canshare some FCs and some syntactic forms. The differencesbetween the two languages behind using theformula ‘I promise you’ to express a threat can be attributedto the following points:a-English tends to avoid using the formula ‘I threatenyou’ by a euphemistic formula ‘I promise you’ owing to thefact that this formula of threatening is rarely accepted asa performative and has a pragmatic restriction or an offensivemeaning in English culture.b-Arabic tends to use the performative verb ‘ وعد ’ (promise)to express a threat since it has the strongest degreeof commitment of the S, and to emphasize the degree ofpunishment in a metaphorical way.