Sociolinguistic Study of The Horse Image in Some English and Iraqi Arabic Proverbs

Abstract

This research deals with the horse image in some English and Iraqi Arabic proverbs showing how English and Iraqi Arabs interpret, understand, and use these proverbs which include horse image. The selected proverbs are analyzed depending on Holme’s (2013) social factors which are: social distance variable, status variable and formality variable of setting. The English population of the research includes two universities in England. To make the project more applicable, the focus is on Leeds and London universities. The researcher chooses students randomly from “University of Leeds” in Leeds and a university named “London School of Economics and Political Sciences” in London. As for the Iraqi Arabic population, the people who represent the Arabic sample of the current study are from Tikrit and Anbar cities. They are enrolled at “Tikrit University” and “Anbar University” respectively. Among the findings, it is found out that English and Iraqi Arabs have somehow similar connotations concerning the horse image in relation to cultural, occupational, social distance, and formality variables. This denotes that though the two cultures are different, they share some social variables as they have similar connotations for some concepts as in the selected topic. The occupational variable shows that native speakers of both languages indicate that the proverbs which include the horse image are used more frequently by farmers other than other occupations.