This paper investigates the collocational use of irreversible food binomials in the lexicons of English (UK) and Arabic (Iraq), their word-order motivations, cultural background, and how they compare. Data consisted in sixteen pairs in English, versus fifteen in Arabic. Data analysis has shown their word order is largely motivated by logical sequencing of precedence; the semantically bigger or better item comes first and the phonologically longer word goes last. These apply in a cline of decreasing functionality: logical form first, semantic importance second, phonological form last. In competition, the member higher in this cline wins first membership. While the entries in each list clearly reflect culturally preferred food meals in the UK and Iraq, ten food items recur in both lists, denoting their common ground in staple food cuisine. On the other hand, certain types of preferred meat and drink food items are significantly affected by the cultural norms in both languages.
Onomatopoeia has always been a functional poetic device which enjoys a high sound significance in the poetry of many languages. In modern English and Arabic poetry alike, it proves to be vital and useful at different levels: musical, thematic and at the level of meaning. Still, the cultural difference looms large over the ways it is employed by the poets of each. The present paper investigates the employment of onomatopoeia in the poetry of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964) who are chosen due to the importance they enjoy in modern English and Arabic poetry and the richness of their poems in onomatopoeias. The conclusions reached at are in a sense related to cultural differences which govern the use of onomato
... Show MoreCancer is one of the critical health concerns. Health authorities around the world have devoted great attention to cancer and cancer causing factors to achieve control against the increasing rate of cancer. Carcinogens are the most salient factors that are accused of causing a considerable rate of cancer cases. Scientists, in different fields of knowledge, keep warning people of the imminent attack of carcinogens which are surrounding people in the environment and may launch their attack at any moment. The present paper aims to investigate the linguistic construction of the imminent carcinogen attack in English and Arabic scientific discourse. Such an investigation contributes to enhancing the scientists’ awareness of the linguistic co
... Show MoreDBN Rashid, 2012 - Cited by 2
Objective: To identify barriers to healthcare access, to assess the health literacy levels of the foreign-born Arabic speaking population in Iowa, USA and to measure their prevalence of seeking preventive healthcare services. Methods: A cross-sectional study of native Arabic speaking adults involved a focus group and an anonymous paper-based survey. The focus group and the Andersen Model were used to develop the survey questionnaire. The survey participants were customers at Arabic grocery stores, worshippers at the city mosque and patients at free University Clinic. Chi-square test was used to measure the relationship between the characteristics of survey participants and preventive healthcare services. Thematic analysis was
... Show MoreTranslating culture-specific proverbs (CSPs) is a challenging task since they often occur in a peculiar context. Further, CSPs are intended to imply meanings that extend far beyond the literal meaning of such a kind of proverbs. As far as English and Arabic are concerned, translators often encounter problems in translating CSPs due to cultural differences between the source language(SL) and the target language (TL) as well as what seems to be the lack of equivalence for some CSPs.
In view of this, the present study aims at investigating the translation of CSPs in three English-Arabic dictionaries of proverbs, namely Dictionary of Common English Proverbs Translated and Explained (2004), One thousand and One English Pr
... Show MoreEnglish has for long been one of the most widely used media of communication globally, especially in the Malaysian universities. It has been termed as a Lingua Franca because it is shared with other languages which are considered first languages by different speakers. For this reason, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has attracted a number of researchers to investigate its variety via other languages in various communities. The objective of this paper is therefore to establish the strategies which are employing by the international students at the National University of Malaysia/ UniversitiKebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) as an example of one of the Malaysian universities; when they e
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