Sarcouncil Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract: This study examines the pragmatic characteristics of speech acts that convey the meanings of possibility and impossibility within the framework of modality in Modern Standard Arabic. The research draws upon both linguistic theory and pragmatic analysis to identify how modal meanings are encoded and interpreted in various communicative contexts. The corpus for the study consists of authentic Arabic texts from literary, media, and conversational sources, allowing for a comparative analysis of modal markers across formal and informal registers. Special attention is given to the influence of cultural norms, politeness strategies, and speaker-hearer relationships on the choice and pragmatic function of modal expressions. The findings reveal that Arabic employs a range of syntactic, lexical, and prosodic devices to express degrees of possibility and impossibility, and that these are often shaped by context-sensitive pragmatic considerations rather than purely semantic constraints. This underscores the importance of integrating pragmatic analysis into the study of modality, particularly for understanding the communicative and interpersonal functions of modal expressions in Arabic. The results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of Arabic modality and provide useful insights for linguistic theory, translation studies, and intercultural communication.