Abstract

The paper aims to provide insights onto the relationship between ethics and semantic change and how ethics could change the semantic values through tracing the historical development in meaning of selected lexical items in Saudi colloquial speech. The study starts from the hypothesis that there is a reciprocal connection between ethics and semantic change. It seeks to examine whether the common ethical values could result into changing the peripheral meaning of lexical items. In order to obtain more accurate and precise results about the effect of the ethics on the semantic shift in Saudi Arabic, the study applies a qualitative methodology through which it conducts an interview with more than thirty Saudi male and female belonging to different ages and different cultural backgrounds in order to get their feedback and response about their understanding of a set of chosen lexical items. The study has reached the finding that the common ethical values dominating a society can reshape the meaning of the lexical items into the minds of speakers.

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