Analytical Study of Remorse in Religious Texts in English and Arabic Languages

Abstract

Remorse is a contrite emotion experienced by a person who regrets actions which are deemed to be hurtful, shameful, or violent. Presumably remorse in religion may be different from that of ordinary life. Furthermore, remorse linguistically manifests itself in different manners and behaviors (direct, indirect, declarative, and imperative). The permanent study confines itself within the religious texts in English and Arabic languages. The data chosen for this purpose are the Old testament of Bible as an English data and Al-Sahifa al Sajadia as an Arabic data. The study targets at showing how in religious text, the majority of remorse are realized in declarative rather than imperative or exclamation utterances though there is a chance for the last two options to occur. Furthermore, most Arabic religious remorse is identified in direct speech acts while English remorse is realized throughout indirect speech act. The study answers a set of empirical questions: 1-What makes remorse different from similar speech acts which seem outwardly the same but inwardly not, like; guilt, regret, repentance and other likes 2- What are the similarities and differences in both languages in question. An eclectic model is adopted for the analysis. The study illustrates that Remorse in religious language is not the same to that one of ordinary life since the former but not necessarily the latter  targets repentance to be its own goal. Moreover there is a variation in the use of  it in of both languages though there are some similarities. Arabic language proved to be profoundly richer than English. What distinguishes the former is the abundance of exclamation and imperative modes, the descriptive phrases, the direct speech acts besides the active voice and declarative mode which represent the similarities between the two languages.