A linguistic analysis of the speech act of advice in American English proverbs

Abstract EN

The present study is an endeavor to apply the speech act theory to the American English proverbs and analyze them in away similar to that used in conversational speech acts in spoken language.

The study concentrates on the speech act of advice to show whether it is subjected to certain rules and distinctive semantic meanings that prevent it from becoming misfire.

This research is of a two fold function: The first one is devoted to the definition of proverb and its linguistic and the nonlinguistic characterization.

It focuses on different aspects such as the etymological background, and the different definitions of proverb proposed by different scholars and linguists.

The second one is devoted to the investigation and analysis of the proposed speech act, namely: advice in American English proverbs.

The analysis will cover three levels: pragmatic, Semantic, and structural level to get a full account of this type of meaning.