Pragmatic Investment of Figurative and Non-Figurative Designations: The Case of the Egyptian Revolution in Arabic and English Contexts

Abstract

The problem why a speaker or a writer assigns a certain designation for the Egyptian revolution in 2011 is the primary focus of this paper. For this objective, this paper investigates underlying conceptual relations between the literal word ‘revolution’ and its different figurative and non-figurative designations. The syntagmatic relation between the literal tenor revolution and its designations or ‘vehicles’ can be interpreted in terms of user’s pragmatic investment of designations in discourse. The data in this study have been gathered from various written and spoken discourses and consist mainly of the most frequent designations of January 25 revolution. The analysis of data shows that pragmatic investment is determined by three main perlocutions, the user’s intentions of being unbiased, tactful, and biased. These intentions also determine the meanings of the designations according to five conceptual relations. These conceptual relations show the link between the word revolution and the user’s figurative or non-figurative designations such as spatial and temporal relations that determine the literal designations, tactful relations that determine the diplomatic use of figurative designations, and positive and negative relations that determine the figurative designations of pro- or anti-revolutionists. The study is based on an eclectic pragmatic approach to explore the literal/non-literal meanings of the designations and their pragmatic investment. This approach is mainly based on Searle’s contextual assumptions, Katz’s approach of literalness and Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual theory. The study concludes that several pragmatic determiners of meaning govern the pragmatic investment of figurative and non-figurative designations, their underlying conceptual relations, and their degree of literalness.