International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation (IJLLT) ISSN: 2617-0299 (Online); ISSN: 2708-0099 (Print) DOI: 10.32996/ijllt Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/ijllt Page | 109 Analytical Study of Remorse in Religious Texts in English and Arabic Languages Ahmed Sultan Hussein 1 and Sameer Abdulrazak Abood* 2 1 Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University, Iraq 2 M.A. Student, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University, Iraq Corresponding Author: Sameer Abdulrazak Abood, E-mail: Sameer196059a@gmail.com ARTICLE INFORMATION ABSTRACT Received: November 01, 2020 Accepted: January 17, 2021 Volume: 4 Issue: 1 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.1.12 Remorse is a contrite emotion experienced by a person who regrets actions which are deemed to be hurtful, shameful, or violent. Presumably remorse in religion may be different from that of ordinary life. Furthermore, remorse linguistically manifests itself in different manners and behaviors (direct, indirect, declarative, and imperative). The permanent study confines itself within the religious texts in English and Arabic languages. The data chosen for this purpose are the Old testament of Bible as an English data and Al-Sahifa al Sajadia as an Arabic data. The study targets at showing how in religious text, the majority of remorse are realized in declarative rather than imperative or exclamation utterances though there is a chance for the last two options to occur. Furthermore, most Arabic religious remorse is identified in direct speech acts while English remorse is realized throughout indirect speech act. The study answers a set of empirical questions: 1-What makes remorse different from similar speech acts which seem outwardly the same but inwardly not, like; guilt, regret, repentance and other likes 2- What are the similarities and differences in both languages in question. An eclectic model is adopted for the analysis. The study illustrates that Remorse in religious language is not the same to that one of ordinary life since the former but not necessarily the latter targets repentance to be its own goal. Moreover there is a variation in the use of it in of both languages though there are some similarities. Arabic language proved to be profoundly richer than English. What distinguishes the former is the abundance of exclamation and imperative modes, the descriptive phrases, the direct speech acts besides the active voice and declarative mode which represent the similarities between the two languages. KEYWORDS Analytical, study, remorse, religious language, English, Arabic 1. Introduction 1 A useful definition of the concept remorse must be sufficiently broad as to include all the relevant phenomena and sufficiently narrow as to exclude other things. Accordingly, it is of great significance to identify the inwardness and the defining characteristics of remorse on one hand , and to differentiate it from similar and related concepts like repentance , guilt , regret, and sorrow on the other hand. The concept of remorse has a prominent niche in several ancient and contemporary ethical theories and it was the polarization of attention of scholars in psychology, philosophy and other sciences. Questions like; is it only a psychological phenomenon or it is merely a belief? who controls whom? or, in other words, who leads whom, the reason or the emotion? why does remorse occur? does it concern only human being or it includes other species like animals? are infants and mad men included or it needs not only conscious but full conscious?, have been the anxieties of all thinkers and philosophers from the early ancient Greeks to modern specialists. The role of reason in human thinking and behavior has been highlighted. Nevertheless, the role of emotion has been enlightened to humanize the operation. Owing to the nature of the topic, this paper is principally a contrastive study. It used a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. The researcher concentrates, as an English data, on the Old testament being a part of Bible which encompasses between its folds the Old Testaments and New Testaments. The Authorized King James Version is the adopted one. On the other side Al-Sahifa al Sajadia is the counterpart as an Arabic data. An eclectic psalm of “David the king” from the bible was the choice to be in equal balance in analysis with an Arabic prayer from “Al-Sahifa al Sajadia”. Numerous descriptions of the Published by Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development. Copyright (c) the author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license