This paper reports on the findings of a study investigating the comprehension of Arabic metaphors by Jordanian school children. Thirty typically developing school children aged 6, 8 and 10 years old performed a metaphor verbal comprehension task based on 10 lexicalized metaphorical expressions incorporated into 10 short stories. Each short story ends with a target metaphorical expression and is followed by a question about identifying the referent of the metaphorical expression. The results show that old children were better at comprehending metaphors than young children. The study concludes that the comprehension of metaphor develops significantly with chronological age. Furthermore, the degree of the child’s familiarity with given metaphors plays a crucial role in influencing the comprehension of metaphors.

The present study aims at examining the persuasion process in Arabic religious discourse. In particular, it seeks to investigate the persuasive strategies used in Friday sermons. The data of the study is elicited from ten randomly selected Friday sermons delivered by Dr. Mohammad Rateb Al-Nabulsi. The study utilizes Connor and Lauer's (1985) model to explore rational, credibility and affective appeals. The findings point out the crucial role of persuasive appeals in enhancing the persuasive impact of the argument. The results reveal that the most frequently used appeals are rational appeals followed by affective and credibility appeals respectively. The analysis records the prevalence of the authority strategy among rational appeals, while showing the speaker's shared interest and point of view is the most pervasive strategy among credibility appeals. Finally, the use of vivid pictures is the most dominant strategy among affective appeals.

The current study aims at assessing the translation of metaphors in three English translations of the Holy Quran, namely, Al-Hilali & Khan (2000), Y. Ali (2004), and Abdel Haleem (2005). In particular, it investigates the translation strategies adopted by the three translators to render ten Quranic metaphorical expressions into English based on Newmark’s (1988) metaphor translation strategies. Each Quranic metaphor is examined in its context based on the two tafsir (exegesis) books: Tafsir al-Jalalayn and Tanwir al Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbass. The translation strategies employed in the three English translations are assessed in terms of their suitability. The results indicated that the most frequently used strategies to render Quranic metaphors are reproducing the same image in the TL literally, converting metaphor into sense, translating metaphor by simile keeping the image, converting metaphor into simile plus sense, and reproducing the same metaphor combined with sense, respectively. The study concluded that the most efficient translation is the one provided by Al-Hilali & Khan (2000) as they tried to retain the metaphorical image.