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Linguistic and Epistemic Inference in Cross-Cultural Communication!

Ali Darwish

1 November 2006

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Abstract

Modern languages have developed linguistic patterns that are often in consonance with the epistemic knowledge of the world. For the main part, epistemic knowledge is inferred from such linguistic patterns. In some situations however, dissonance occurs between linguistic knowledge and epistemic knowledge. When this happens, language compensates by utilizing certain linguistic patterns and rhetorical techniques to realign linguistic and epistemic realities. For example, the English hypothetical conditional pattern "If I were you" is a compensatory linguistic technique to achieve concordance between linguistic and epistemic knowledge when it is physically impossible for one person to be another person physically, without psychosis or surgical interference.

This paper examines aspects of translation-induced dissonance in linguistic and epistemic inference in modern Arabic.          

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