Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 22 Issue 1

evaluations of human behaviors and characteristics, except for camels which have been found to be also positively evaluated. Strictly speaking, donkeys were mostly referred to as dull, stubborn and stupid; monkeys were viewed as ugly, noisy, and intolerable; wolves were perceived as cruel, deceitful, and tricky; and dogs were conceptualized as impure, scruffy, and inferior. As for camels, they were evaluated positively in one proverb as brave, noble, and powerful, while they were negatively thought of as arrogant, hypercritical, and ignorant in another. The study also showed that the conceptualization of people as animals seems to achieve different pragmatic functions of these metaphorical animal proverbs when linked to the Hijazi culture. For instance, some of the proverbs can be used to criticize, scorn, reprimand, belittle, advise, urge, warn, or perform a satirical function. Consequently, the selected Hijazi animal proverbs can be perceived as performative speech acts with designated pragmatic functions (Austin, 1962), in the sense that a person is performing a specific act by uttering a particular proverb in a specific social interaction. By applying the theories of Cultural Linguistics proposed by Palmer (1996) which indicate the interconnectedness of culture and language, several social values have been deduced from the Hijazi animal proverbs selected in this study. For instance, certain proverbs have asserted the importance of respecting other people's boundaries, being objective by considering the other person's point of view, and being content with what one already owns. In addition, the proverbs have warned people from the effect of deception on people’s relationships, from living a life of hypocrisy, and from focusing on other people’s flaws. To conclude, many such cultural norms and social values seem to be symbolically embedded in the selected Hijazi animal proverbs and tend to have a significant influence on people’s lives, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs within the Hijazi culture. It can be argued that the negative connotations that arise from equating people with animals can be ascribed to the hierarchical system of the Great Chain of Being (GCB, hereafter) advanced by such ancient philosophers as Plato and Aristotle (Nisbet, 1982, p. 35, as cited in Kiełtyka & Kleparski, 2005) and its mechanism was employed by Lakoff and Turner (1989) to investigate the meanings of different metaphors. The organization of GCB tends to designate a place for everything that exist in the whole universe in a strict hierarchical structure that is vertically chained (Kiełtyka, 2015). The GCB presupposes that the chain begins with God and descends through angels, humans, animals, and plants, to minerals at the bottom (Rodríguez, 2009). Clearly, people stand above animals, as the chain places humans at the top of a hierarchy of intelligence, complexity, and value. This hierarchical system tends to have critical conceptual and sociolinguistic consequences since people are being degraded by attributing certain innate animalistic qualities to them. Therefore, the conceptual metaphor PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS seems to function as a means to express negative human traits, characteristics, and behaviors (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005) in different communicative situations. VIII. C onclusion and R ecommendations The present study has sought to investigate the connotative nuances and the pragmatic functions of animal proverbial sayings in Hijazi Arabic in Saudi Arabia. It has also attempted to deduce the human- animal interface and to explore the cultural norms and social values of the Hijazi society as portrayed in the selected proverbs. The findings showed that animals take part in the constitution of the social, moral and cultural context of a human's life. It has been observed that animal proverbs assign animalistic characteristics to human traits and qualities. Therefore, the animal names are utilized as linguistic means to portray human behaviors, beliefs, cultural norms, and social values. The study had also a central focus on revealing the semantic molecules and prototypical connotations of five animal classes, namely donkeys, monkeys, wolves, dogs, and camels. Most of the animals included in the study were conceptualized negatively by Hijazi speakers within the Hijazi culture, except for camels which were, in only one occasion, evaluated positively. Like any other human endeavor in diversified fields of knowledge, this study is certainly not without limitations. It seems that this particular area of linguistic investigation demands more research, by virtue of the scarcity of studies that tackle animal proverbial sayings in Hijazi Arabic and in other dialects found in Saudi Arabia. Due to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers have analyzed only a confined set of animal proverbs despite the fact that Hijazi people’s repertoire of proverbial expressions is full of other examples that have not been explored. Hence, researchers are encouraged to study different collections of animal proverbs, and from such other linguistic perspectives as cognitive, syntactic, phonetic and phonological viewpoints. In so doing, a better understanding of the people and the language under investigation can be achieved by examining such linguistic vehicles which tend to undoubtedly reveal some of human behaviors, thoughts, beliefs, cultural norms, and social views. R eferences R éférences R eferencias 1. Alghamdi, N. (2019). Socio-pragmatic representation of animal in Al-Bahah proverbs: © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue I Version I 63 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 C Exploring Connotative Meanings and Metaphors of Saudi Animal Proverbs: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis