A Pragmatic Analysis of Woman's Images in Selected English and Arabic Proverbs

Abstract

This study is within the framework of linguistics that tries to analyze written and spoken discourse and study its features through pragmatic tools to understand the process of communication. The study mainly aims to seek the meaning through pragmatic analysis to reveal both negative and positive depiction about women in some English and Arabic proverbs. The samples were taken from different written and spoken sources. The study concluded that proverb had various expressions that consist of imperative, prohibitive, conditional and compound negative construction. Semantic meaning is different from pragmatic function that is related to the background story of the proverb used to support; object of ridicule the context if it is violates the human civilizational norms.