A Pragmatic Analysis of Cursing in Mosuli Arabic with Reference to English

الملخص

Speech acts are of great importance within the bounds of
semantics and pragmatics depending on the shared background
information between hearer and speaker. One type of speech acts is
“cursing”. Cursing is a particular and important phenomenon in
communication from the perspective of social linguistics and
folklores. Therefore, curses are commonly used in everyday language.
We may curse at someone for making us angry or sad by expressing
our inner feelings and attitudes. While some languages have few curse
utterances, other languages, such as Arabic and particularly Mosuli
Iraqi Arabic, is well known for its imaginative and numerous curse
expressions.
In this study, a survey of the characteristics and goals of curse
utterances in Mosuli Arabic is carried out by examining examples
with concepts from the speech act theory and Vanci-Osam‟s (1998)
ethnographic criteria.
Throughout the study, the examples demonstrate that curse
utterances allow mainly the “addressors” to enjoy a high degree of
creativity and verbal flexibility formed within a seven types cursing
expressions used by Mosuli Arabic speakers. (cursing people, cursing
the dead, cursing health, cursing envy, cursing luck, cursing by the
word curse “ٔ ”العن and cursing body parts) all of these fall within the
stream of our present study.