Conversational Implicature in English and Cairene Arabic: A Study in Contrastive Linguistics | ||||
| Egyptian Journal of Linguistics and Translation | ||||
| Volume 2, Issue 1, July 2015, Page 147-328 PDF (724.54 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Research in linguistic and literary studies | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejlt.2015.200704.1012 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
Ahmed M. Abu-hassoub  
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| Department of English. Faculty of Languages. Sohag University. Sohag. Egypt | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| This study aims at exploring and analyzing conversational implicatures in Cairene Arabic. It, also, aims at testing whether variables as age and sex have influence on the use of conversational implicature in Arabic or not, and whether English proficiency affects the use of conversational implicature in English as a nonnative language or not. In addition, the present study aims at contrasting conversational implicatures between spoken Arabic as a native language and spoken English as a foreign language. To fulfill the purpose of the study, data was collected from Cairene Arabic, transcribed and analyzed by the researcher according to Grice's (1975) "Cooperative Principle". Two questionnaires were administered to a group of Cairenes to test the use of Conversational Implicature. One of them is in Arabic and the other is in English. It was obvious that conversational implicatures can function differently in different contexts. The results of the present study indicate that implicatures exist in Arabic. Moreover, Arabic involves implicatures more than English does. Also, the results reveal that there are some situations in which the participants use implicatures least, and there are some other situations where implicatures are mostly used. Regarding age, the results of the first group reveal that implicatures are used by younger participants more than by old participants. Younger participants tend to be less relevant, less truthful, and more informative than what is required. However, older participants are relatively less informative, and more truthful in their Arabic responses. Regarding sex, the study reveals that males generally use implicatures in Arabic more than females do at all ages. Regarding English proficiency, the results exhibit that the more the participants are proficient in English, the more they use implicatures in their English responses. The study proves that there are some similarities in the use of implicatures in English and Arabic. Still there are some differences in the usage of implicature. Implicatures that are raised out of flouting the maxims of relevance and quality are detected to appear in Arabic more than in English. Also, Arabic responses tend to be more informative than what is required. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Conversational Implicature; CP; Cooperative principle; Arabic discourse | ||||
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