Abstract

The expression inshallah is one of the most common expressions in daily interactions among Jordanians. The paper assumes that the expression has various non-literal meanings besides the literal one which is an invocation to Allah to enable the speaker to achieve a positive or a negative action. The non-literal meanings, on the other hand, are all cases of flouting Grice’s maxim of quality, whereby the speaker does not mean what the words literally mean; however, the addressee or the hearer can figure out the message intended by the speaker. The paper has found out that the various non-literal meanings inshallah serves are: irony, which a typical means for flouting the maxim of quality, threatening, wonder, yes/ok, prohibition, and wishing. Moreover, the study has found out that the utterances containing the expression inshallah will not give the same meaning after the removal of inshallah. And this can be considered another major contribution for the paper since it coined a diagnostic for deriving the non-literal meanings of inshallah. (p. 162)

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