A pragmalinguistic study of threat and warning in English and Arabic

Abstract EN

This research project deals with the aspects of threats and warnings as speech acts or as verbal actions performed by speakers.

Threat is one speech act defined as the act of declaration of hostile determination to be inflicted in retribution for or conditionally upon some course, whereas warning is the act of intimation or notice of something as about to happen.

Obviously, there is a close relation and inherent tensions between them.

How can speakers assume that the intended illocutionary force will be recognized by the hearer? A speech act of threatening, especially a conditional one, overlaps with warning.

For example: "I am going to kill you if you don‟t return my car." In this paper, we present two bodies of research focusing on two different kinds of speech acts in Arabic and English.

In performing threats, as it is hypothesized, the most agentive participant is the speaker but in warnings it is the hearer.

It is concluded that in both languages, warning is the negative of advice and threat is the negative of promise.