Ethnosemantic, Pragmatic, And Textual Analysis Of Kinship Terms In Arabic And English Discourse
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Date
2016-07
Authors
Mohammed Nakhilawi, Hashim Aliwy
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Abstract
This study aims at investigating, comparatively, the ethnosemantic, pragmatic, and textual aspects of kinship terms in Arabic and English languages. This is because most of the previous kinship studies have focused on explaining the sociological or ethnological basis of kinship structures and classifications. Moreover, little attention has been given to the linguistic aspects specifically pragmatics as well as the religious aspect of kinship terms. The current study is a qualitative content analysis that aims to provide a thorough and systematic examination of kinship terms in twenty selected religious and legislative texts to identify the co-occurrences of kinship concepts and to reveal the similarities and differences between the two languages and cultures in this respect. Consequently, in order to understand the nature of kinship terms in both sociolinguistic cultures, the researcher focuses on two levels of analysis: textual analysis and comparative analysis. Because the study is of twofold (comparative analysis and textual analysis), the researcher adopts some socio-cultural theories represented by Descent, Alliance, Sponsorship as well as Murdock‘s (1965) classification of kinship terms, and a linguistic theory represented by Halliday‘s (1978; 1985; 2009) Systemic Functional Linguistic theory (SFL). The researcher has selected twenty extracted representative texts: six texts from the Glorious Quran, six texts from the Holy Bible, four texts from the Iraqi Personal Status Law, and four texts from American family law. The findings of this study at the comparative and textual levels revealed that one must study kinship terms not only from the biological point of view, but also from the ethnolinguistic and social aspects due to their importance and relevance in people‘s life. It was found that KTs in English and Western culture have three main forms of kinship: descent, affinal and fictive; whereas in Arabic and Islamic culture, there are four basic forms of kinship relations: descent, affinal, milk, and fictive because English culture has ignored the
role of milk in creating kinship relations. It was also found that kinship is not only a matter of sociology or designating certain terms, but it is a bridge that can link various linguistic, social, economic, religious, political, and cultural aspects of societies. Thus, this study has linked kinship terms with many important matters such as marriage, incestuous taboo relations, inheritance, homosexuality, polygamy and divorce. Finally, the study ends with some key points of similarity and difference between Arabic and English in relation to different social aspects of kinship terms.
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Keywords
The ethnosemantic, pragmatic, and textual aspects of kinship terms , in Arabic and English languages.