The semantic view of translating litotes from English into Arabic

Abstract EN

This study deals with the semantic analysis of translating litotes, the rhetorical figure of speech.

In litotes, context plays an essential role in determining the overall understanding of the meaning of litotes expressions.

The study hypothesizes that the cultural manifestation also plays an essential role to discriminate the meaning of the overall context of the text.

Also the paper deals with the case of double negation when two forms of negation are used in the same clause.

In some logics and some languages, double negatives cancel each other out and produce an affirmative sense.

In other languages, double negatives intensify the negation.

The rhetorical term for this effect, when it leads to understand affirmation, is litotes