Verbal Abuse: A Study in English-Arabic Pragmatics

Abstract

Verbal abuse is an act of using words or expressions against the persons' family members. It is an offence when a person forcefully criticizes, insults, or denounces someone else. It is distinguished from other offences by underlying anger or hostility. It is regarded as a destructive form of communication which is intended to harm the self-concept of the persons and produce negative emotions. Verbal abuse consists of two elements which are physical and internal. It is like the other five verbal offences which are bribery, blackmail, defamation, insulting, verbal threat but each deals with a different legal aspect. Dictionaries are different in referring to insulting and verbal abuse as being the same or different. Verbal abuse is sometimes included within defamation or insulting or threatening. So, this area of the study is problematic. The aim of the present paper is showing the similarities and differences in verbal abuse in terms of speech act theory, implicature and impoliteness between English and Arabic. This study concludes that verbal abuse as a speech act has both illocutionary and perlocutionary acts in both languages. This study will make contributions because there is a focus on its legal and pragmatic aspects in both languages. Then, the information and results are so important for lawyers, readers of linguistics and contrastive analysis. It can also be of a great benefit to the MA and PH.D students whether in linguistics or at law departments.