In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

145 10 nominalization in arabic Discourse: a Genre analysis perspective AH MED FAK HR I West Virginia University this chApter investigAtes the functions of nominalization in Arabic discourse with a particular focus on legal genres. Nominalization is “the process via which a finite verbal clause . . . is converted into a noun phrase” (Givón 2009, 6). For example, the sentence “She knows mathematics extensively” can be converted into the noun phrase “her extensive knowledge of mathematics.” Genre analysis studies—such those by Swales (1981, 1990), Bhatia (1992, 1993), and Hyland (2000, 2007)—have shown that the achievement of the communicative goals of particular genres requires particular grammatical structures (e.g., past or present tense, passive voice, impersonal constructions). This chapter builds upon this research and examines how nominalization serves the purpose of such legal genres as court judgments; legislative provisions; and fatwas, the legal opinions based on Islamic law and issued by a mufti, a jurisconsult. The importance of the contribution of the proposed analyses to Arabic discourse and genre analysis in general is assessed in the first section. The second section presents a qualitative analysis of the various functions of nominalization with illustrations from the genres under consideration. The third and final section addresses an important issue raised by the analysis that concerns variation resulting from the choice between nominalization and equivalent finite clauses. rationale for the study This study seeks to make two related contributions. First, it expands the scope of the still relatively limited research on Arabic discourse by building on the few studies on Arabic genres that attempt to relate textual properties to elements of the context where the texts are produced. Second, by exploring novel data from Arabic legal genres, it is hoped that the study will contribute new insights to genre analysis in general, especially regarding the role of particular grammatical structures in fulfilling generic purposes. These two points are developed in turn. In comparison with other areas of Arabic linguistics, the study of Arabic discourse has always lagged a bit. In a 1990 article on the state of Arabic linguistics, Eid (1990, 26) wrote: “In the area of discourse analysis, I have not found anything Ahmed Fakhri 146 on spoken discourse; on written discourse or texts some work is now emerging—especially that of Johnstone and Al-Batal.” Since then, however, the study of Arabic discourse has seen a steady quantitative increase as well as qualitative improvements of the investigations conducted. This is especially true for written texts in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is not surprising because, as suggested by Fakhri (2005), this privileged status of MSA prose reflects similar treatment at the more traditional linguistic levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax, where MSA has occupied a prominent position compared with spoken regional vernaculars. There are, however, studies of spoken discourse that have led to interesting findings regarding the conduct of social interaction in Arab communities. Arent (1998) and Kharraki (2001), for instance, use data from Jordan and Morocco, respectively, to investigate price negotiation strategies among merchants and their customers during the bargaining episodes that occur frequently in Arab markets. In a detailed study of the expression yaʿnī “I mean” in Arabian Peninsula speech, Owens and Rockwood (2009) found out that this discourse marker has a large number of functions: It introduces elaborations on nominated topics and serves as a focus or politeness marker, for example. Bassiouney (2009, 162–85; also see chapter 8 of this volume) presents a qualitative and quantitative analyses of data from television talk shows to investigate interactional patterns in the speech of Egyptian women. The latter are found to be quite assertive, exhibiting a slightly higher frequency of interruptions than men. Research on Arabic written discourse has shown a relatively more important growth. Several studies have dealt with frequent features of Arabic prose that give it a distinctive quality, especially when compared with commonly studied Western languages such as English. Lexical repetition, structural parallelism, and the prevalence of coordination are some of the more salient and widely investigated features (Fakhri 1998; Johnstone 1990, 1991). The prevalence of these features is partially attributed to the orality of Arabic discourse, which presumably stems from the oral styles valued in earlier developments of the Arabic language. It is also attributed to the syntactic mechanisms available in Arabic, to the socioculturally motivated desire of writers to draw attention to the form of the message itself, and to a preferred rhetorical strategy for persuasion and emphasis that consists in “accumulating and insisting...

Share