Pragmatic Ambiguity in selected Arabic literary texts

Abstract EN

Ambiguity is one of the causes behind language complexity.

One of the commonest types of ambiguity is the pragmatic ambiguity.

Pragmatic ambiguity is a problematic area in understanding language, it is rarely investigated in Arabic literary texts, and most readers are not capable of determining the source of pragmatic ambiguity in those texts.

The present paper is intended to investigate and analyze pragmatic ambiguity in selected Arabic literary texts.

The data are taken from two selected Arabic novels; Frankeshtine in Baghdad and Only the Pomegranate Tree.

To achieve the research goals, Leech (1983) is adopted as a model of analysis.

The study aims at investigating pragmatic ambiguity in Arabic literary texts and diagnosing the types of pragmatic ambiguity in those texts to lead to a better understanding of literary texts and explore some new horizons in linguistic studies.

The study hypothesizes that Arabic readers face different types of pragmatic ambiguity and that pragmatic ambiguity of some expressions in Arabic literary texts may occur naturally because the writers are not fully aware of that ambiguity as they believe that the expressions are clear.

Five types of pragmatic ambiguity have been detected in the two novels; speech act, idiomatic, style shift, cultural, and deictical.

Deictical ambiguity was the most frequent type of pragmatic ambiguity.

Finally, it was concluded that pragmatic ambiguity is a common phenomenon in language, and ambiguous structures and expressions are heavily loaded in these novels.