Impoliteness strategies at a Jordanian hospital Emergency Room

Impoliteness as a natural phenomenon is observed in many face-to-face encounters. It is employed to cause offense and attack the face of the hearer and sometimes over-hearers. One of the researchers who was working at the University of Jordan Hospital noticed that patients and/or their relatives use verbal and nonverbal impolite behaviour when addressing the hospital staff and doctors. In order to investigate the various strategies utilised by Arabic speaking patients and/or their relatives to express impoliteness towards the Emergency Room (ER) staff at a Jordanian hospital, observation and note-taking were used to collect the impolite instances for a period of 30 days during April 2014. A total of 100 face-to-face interactions, which included impolite expressions were collected. The results of the study showed that the patients and their relatives used 208 impoliteness instances while interacting with the admin staff, nurses and doctors. The most used strategy of impoliteness was ‘bald on record impoliteness’ followed by ‘negative impoliteness’, ‘positive impoliteness’, ‘sarcasm or mock politeness’ and ‘withhold politeness’. The study concludes that the various types and strategies of impoliteness used by the patients and/or their relatives were aiming at offending and threatening the face of the hospital staff and doctors, and this behaviour, as observed in the various interactions that took place, could be attributed to their dissatisfaction of the health care services provided

A cross-cultural analysis of disagreement strategies in Algerian and Jordanian Arabic

This study aims to explore the use of disagreement strategies in two Arabic dialects: Jordanian and Algerian Arabic. It also investigates the effect of social status on the choice of disagreement strategies adopting Muntigl’s and Turnbull’s (1998) taxonomy. To achieve these objectives, 40 participants (20 Jordanians and 20 Algerians) were randomly recruited to respond to a discourse completion task (DCT). The participants were requested to read six situations and to react to them by making disagreements with people of higher, equal and lower statuses. A mixed-method approach was used to analyse the data. The results showed that the participants in the two study groups share similar preferences in the use of two main disagreement strategies that scored the highest in High to Low, Low to High, and in Equal statuses. The findings are discussed in the light of (im)politeness and provide implications for socio-pragmatic research in Arabic linguistics

INSTANT MESSAGING LANGUAGE IN JORDANIAN FEMALE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ WRITING

This study seeks to examine the existence of Instant Messaging language phenomenon among female teenagers in some Jordanian private schools and its influence on their learning experience, mainly literacy. It also raises questions about the characteristics of textese as well as teachers’ attitude towards their students’ use of SMS language in their academic writing. The methodology used in this study involves the descriptive and quantitative analysis of writings taken from 320 female teenagers in four different private schools in Amman, Jordan following National and International Programs as well as the responses to a questionnaire filled out by 100 EFL teachers. Upon the examination of these writings, it becomes clear that Instant Messaging language appears in students’ writing, and teachers have reservations towards its use by their students in their writing. Data suggest that teachers should raise students’ awareness of this issue to help them effectively control and enhance the influence of Instant Messaging on their academic writing

Hedging in Political Discourse: Evidence from the Speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan

This paper reports on the findings of a study that aimed to identify the linguistic items which act as hedges in the speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan, as well as to examine the pragmatic functions of these devices. Twenty-five political speeches of King Abdullah II, randomly selected from the official website of King Abdullah (see Appendix), were analyzed adopting Salager-Meyer’s (1994) taxonomy. The study revealed that the most frequently used hedging device in King Abdullah’s speech is modal auxiliaries, and the most frequently used hedging device subcategory is the modal auxiliary “can”. The findings suggest that these hedging devices fulfil several pragmatic functions. These findings contribute to understanding that speaking a second language (Arabic, in the case of King Abdullah II) neither affects the types of hedging devices nor the functions these devices perform. Moreover, contrary to scientific discourse (e.g., medicine), the research concludes that political discourse as a non-scientific genre resorts to hedging devices to express indirectness, politeness, lack of commitment and probability

Persuasion in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump\u27s Presidential Debates: A Critical Discourse Analysis

The present study aims to provide a critical discourse analysis of the persuasion tactics, power distribution, and the ideological stands in the American presidential debates of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The methodology adopted in this study was based on Fairclough\u27s model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (1995). The thorough analysis of the debates revealed strong dichotomy and contested ideological stands, dissimilar power distribution, and the use of varying persuasive tools of both candidates on all the issues of concern such as immigration, economy, human rights, etc. The author recommends further investigation of the presidential debates across varying cultures based on Fairclough\u27s model of CDA

Persuasive appeals in Jordanian and Algerian telecommunication television commercials

The present study seeks to explore the link between persuasion and advertising by examining the persuasive appeals used by telecommunication companies in Jordanian and Algerian television commercials. To this end, 12 television advertisements (six from Jordan and six from Algeria) were randomly selected from YouTube. The data were analysed based on previous categorisations of persuasive appeals. The findings revealed that both groups of advertisements adopted various appeals to persuade their target audience to purchase products and experience their services, and that the most widely used appeals were play on words, brand, celebrity and music appeals. These findings provide insights into the value of understanding how persuasion is used in media discourse and in different linguistic and cultural milieus

Engagement strategies in English and Arabic newspaper editorials

Abstract This study explores the use and functions of engagement strategies in English and Arabic newspaper editorials. To this end, the study analyses 80 editorials collected from two popular newspapers (40 from each): The Guardian which publishes in English and appears in the UK and Addustour which publishes in Arabic and appears in Jordan. Following Paltridge’s (2020) taxonomy, the study utilises a mixed-method approach to assess whether differences in the use of engagement strategies between the two corpora are statistically significant and to identify the functions of the strategies used in the two sets of data. The findings show that there are statistically significant differences between the two languages in the use of some engagement strategies. In particular, Arabic editorials included more reader pronouns and less personal asides than did English ones. In addition, although questioning as an engagement strategy was absent in the Arabic corpus, it was used in the English one to transmit information and circulate knowledge. The findings enrich our understanding of how the editorial genre is constructed, and how editorialists engage with their readers in the two languages