A Prototype Theory-Based Study of Crimes in the English and Arabic Societies Using Web-as-Corpus

Abstract

Drawing on the classified prototypes of semantic categories, this paper uses the principles of the prototype theoryto cross-culturally explore the hierarchical prototypes of crimes in web-booted Arabic and English corpora. The studycompares the conceptualization and categorization of crimes in the Arabic and English worlds. For doing so, four domains‘com, org, info and edu’ are explored over the past seven years for differentiating the individual mentality from theinstitutional mentalities. The study uses the web as corpus to investigate the inductive pattern ‘crime* such as’ in three web domains: ‘.com’, ‘.org’ and ‘.edu’ in Arabic and English. The collected data is analyzed using AntConc software program. Indicated statistical tests are calculated to measure the universality of conceptualizing emotions across Arabic and English speaking worlds. The study explores the validity of using Rosch’s prototype theory (1975) in determining the dynamically changing categorization of criminal acts. It also tests the authenticity of using Web-as-Corpus, which is a verystraightforward tool, in attaining so. Results reveal that there is an Arabic-English agreement on defining the basic levelsof the concept crime. However, few sporadic differences exist and are subject of cultural differences between the orientaland occidental moralities. The principles of prototype theory are also valid as regards the metamorphosis of conceptualizing a concept at the folkloric and expert levels. This holds true as regards the Arabic and English data of this study.