Pragmatic Functions of Arabic and English Imperatives – The Case of Surat Al-Hashr

Abstract

This study discusses imperatives in Arabic and English discourses. It tackles the forms of the imperatives. In addition, it emphasizes the explicit meaning of an imperative structure. Furthermore, it analyses the different pragmatic functions of the various imperative forms. Data of this study are extracted from Surat Al-Hashr [59] within the Glorious Qur'an and their translated equivalents into English by Abdel Haleem (2004). This contrastive analysis is done to explore how imperatives are rendered and how they ought to be rendered. It is found that imperatives in this chapter [59] are structured in various forms and employ various pragmatic functions. The overall finding is that the Arabic and English texts of this study use imperative structures mostly to reveal some pragmatic functions other than commanding, ordering or requesting. These functions are to guide, to instruct, to threaten, to supplicate, to seduce, to assure a command, to urge, to emphasize, and to warn. In contrast to this, imperatives are used to order or to command only twice. These discourse functions depend on the context and cotext of the discourse; the context of the discourse determines the pragmatic functions of the imperative sentences. The analysis finds that both Arabic and English are similar; the translator sticks to choose the forms and structures that mostly refer to the same functions of the Arabic text.