Informativity of Arabic Proverbs in Context: An Insight into Palestinian Discourse

Abstract

This paper provided a linguistic analysis of five Arabic proverbs taken from the Palestinian culture. The five proverbs were analyzed in terms of sound features, cohesion and lexical expressions. The analysis showed how the uniqueness of the structure and content of proverbs make them informative and memorable. The proverbs were given to 10 native speakers of Palestinian Spoken Arabic (PSA), first out of context and then in 5 short dialogues to see whether they could be easily understood when they occur in their social contexts. The results showed that 80% of the subjects were able to provide the meanings of the proverbs in context, whereas only 48% were able to provide their meaning out of context. The results also revealed that the context that precedes the proverb gives more indication of its meaning compared to the context that follows it.