Model for the Pragmatic Analysis of Imprecatives

An imprecative is an act of judgment by God or an appeal to His avenging justice. It represents a broad phenomenon that has been tackled in different fields of study like anthropology, sociology, psychology and theology. Although it has also been studied linguistically, but the focus in such studies is on their syntactic structures. Moreover, pragmatic studies of this topic are characterized by presenting insufficient accounts. Accordingly, this paper is an attempt to develop a pragmatic model for analyzing imprecatives. This is based on a relevant previous model as well as the pragmatic observations made by the researchers.The validity of the developed model has been tested by analyzing nineteen texts taken from the Bible. As a result the model developed by the study has proved its pragmatic validity.