Grammatical and Pragmatic Aspects of Polarity in Arabic Seditious Utterances

Abstract

This study analyzes various grammatical and pragmatic aspects of polarity in Arabic seditious utterances. Arabic Seditious Utterances (ASUs) are a result of the general atmosphere of incitement and discontent against lawful authorities which prevails before and after the revolution. ASUs feature the use of both negative polarity aspects to refute a number of oppressive and unjust actions of political and administrative authorities and other positive polarity aspects to affirm the allegements and demands of the claimants. Such negative and positive distinction in ASUs is represented grammatically (syntactically, lexically, and semantically) in positive and negative polarity items. They are also represented pragmatically in context-sensitive aspects within these utterances. The focus of this paper is on the analysis of seditious utterances, the various aspects of positive and negative syntactic, lexical and semantic polarity items, their scalar ways of representations in addition to other creative aspects of pragmatic-sensitive expressions of polarity. An eclectic approach is designed to suite the analysis of the scalar and multi-aspect nature of grammatical as well as pragmatic data which has been collected within a span of three years of national unrest. The analysis of the examples of ASUs shows that negative and positive polarity distinction rise above the grammatical component to other entailed and implicated pragmatic aspects. The analysis of ASUs also explains the inventive ways of pragmatic aspects which are used to understate or accentuate the control of grammatical and lexical components of polarity according to their various contexts.