The Semantic Meaning and the Pragmatic Function of Animal Proverbs: A Contrastive Study between Arabic and English Proverbs

Abstract

The semantic nature of proverbial expressions forms a big challenge for linguists who are interested in the analysis of the functions of proverbs among languages, bearing in mind the cultural differences which exist between them and the role that these differences play in the semantic interpretation of these expressions. This study aims at highlighting the semantic meaning and the pragmatic function of animal names in Arabic and English proverbs besides showing the importance of the similarities and the differences between Arabic and English proverbs. Although there are many different animal proverbs in Arabic and English, some animals share universal cognition, while others have different cognition in Arabic and English. So the same conceptual metaphor occurs in animal proverbs both in Arabic and English.

Keywords

• animals
• comparison
• pragmatics
• proverbs
• semantics