Abstract
AbstractThis study investigates a special variety of rhetorical questions in colloquial Jordanian Arabic, namely proverbial rhetorical questions: these are rhetorical questions used as proverbs with metaphorical content. Eighty-one instances of PRQs, ethnographically observed in everyday, naturally occurring conversations, were analyzed and their discursive role examined. It was found that PRQs are exploited by the interactants to serve a variety of pragmatic functions, namely invoking common ground in order to convey an opposite point of view, performing ritual impoliteness, performing face-enhancing and face-aggravating acts, evoking humor, and communicating irony. A common thread of these functions is the socioculturally shared presuppositions that underlie these formulaic PRQs and the role that metaphor plays in shaping and communicating messages in social interaction.
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
5 articles.
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