Ethics And Morals In English And Kabyle Proverbs: A Pragmatic And Didactic Analyses

Résumé: The present study intends to investigate ethics and morals particularly in English and Kabyle proverbs. The paper aims at drawing a pragmatic and didactic study of ethics and morals in both languages. Hence, this study seeks to attain three objectives. The first objective is to find out whether ethics and morals are found within the proverbs of the two languages. The second objective consists of illustrating the way these concepts are manifested in proverbs. The third objective seeks to identify the attitudes of listening/speaking teachers towards using proverbs associated to ethics and morals in EFL classrooms. To achieve these objectives, we have selected three books which are: “The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs”, “Receuil de Proverbes Berbères” and “Proverbes et Dictions Kabyles”, extracting from them forty proverbs, twenty for each language. Additionally, these data are supplemented by an interview conducted with ten teachers of listening/ speaking subject at the Department of English at the University of Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou. Moreover, our study adopts Kant’s moral theory ( 1785 cited in Gregor , 1998 ) which is based on three categorical imperatives ( universalazability , the formula of humanity and kingdom of ends ) . The study is qualitative in nature ; hence , the results obtained from the analyses of both the proverbs and the interview are interpreted using the qualitative content analysis relying on Kant’s moral theory (1785 cited in Gregor , 1998) .The findings of the study suggest that ethics and morals are found in both English and Kabyle proverbs. The results also reveal that ethics and morals are manifested comparably in both languages. Even if the wording and the cultures are different, the meaning is closely related. Besides, it is found that teachers of listening and speaking subject have positive attitudes towards teaching ethics and morals through English and Kabyle proverbs in EFL classrooms.

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