Faith and Punishment: Implicitness in English and Arabic Religious Texts

Abstract

Implicitness plays a distinctive role in communicating ideas and emotions as well as it functions to be economical in conveying what the speaker intends to say. This paper is intended to investigate implicitness in religious texts focusing on the reasons that lead the speaker to utilize implicit meaning. Vidal’s (2016) model is adopted to analyze twenty religious texts about faith and punishment in English compared with the other twenty Prophetic Hadiths in Arabic sharing the same two themes. The collected data is qualitatively analyzed through subjective identification and explanation of religious texts, then directed to present them quantitatively through percentages clarified in tables. This paper arrives at the conclusion that implicitness is accounted for via two important strategies: flouting Grice’s maxims and speaker’s intention, as well as the tendency to indicate politeness, advertising, humor, and manipulation, are the main reasons for implicitness in these religious texts.