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Expanding on classic theories of stancetaking and theorizing digital activism as nexus analysis, I examine how Omani Arab citizens used discourse and images to canalize a failed food boycott campaign on Twitter (X) into a united negative stance against alleged corruption. I highlight the role of multimodality, impoliteness, indirectness, intertextual references, participation framework and Arabic cultural practices in creating a multi-layered, accreted stance with manifold implicit functions (e.g., defining Omani identity, lamenting and signalling dissent). I argue for the need to widen the scope and level of analysis of stance acts to include interplays between texts, emoji, actions and images. I also highlight the role that stance can perform in expressing dissent and managing cultural face in the understudied Arabic context. I, therefore, demonstrate the multidimensionality of stance acts made visible by social media affordances and user creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I draw on contemporary theorizing on the concept of face (e.g., Ting-Toomey 1994, 2004; Tracy 2008) and research on Islamic and Arabic cultures and linguistic strategies (e.g., Beeman 1986; Hegland 1998; Wilce 2005; Al Zidjaly 2006) to explore the role that the Internet plays in enabling Muslim Arabs to manage or save their collective face online. I do so by examining the responses that Muslim Arabs from various nationalities and backgrounds post to the website of Al Jazeera, the noted Arabian political news agency, with regard to articles that attack their identity as Muslims. I identify three strategies that enable Muslim Arabs who post to the Al Jazeera website to productively engage in discussion and save collective face--self-praise, West-attack, and self-attack. In this study, I focus on the most widely-used strategy--self attack and demonstrate how self-attack is best understood as a form of "reasonable hostility" (Tracy 2008) in this particular online discussion forum because it saves collective face in a culturally--and contextually--appropriate way. The paper contributes toward developing a grounded practical theory of face (Craig 1989; Craig & Tracy 1995, 2008), to conceptualizing facework online as identity work, and to investigating identity construction at the group level. (Contains 5 notes.)

The unprecedented expansion of wireless technologies and the global pandemic of 2020-2021, which forced many educational establishments out of traditional face-to-face and into online instructional environments, have created an urgency for achieving a better understanding of the various education-related uses of mobile phones, and students' attitudes toward them, worldwide. We conducted a questionnaire-based study to explore college undergraduate students' perceptions and uses of mobile phones, with a focus on instructor-student communication and classroom use, across three diverse cultural contexts: Ukraine, Oman, and the United States. Based on our findings, we suggest that conceptualizing mobile phones as cultural tools and situating their use within cultural discourses illuminates how - and explains why - mobile phones are not "the same" tools for all students. The findings offer insights into students' (developing) perspectives on uses of mobile phones, and provide grounds from which to formulate productive, and culturally appropriate, means of using them for educational purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented discussing the issue's focus on sociolinguistic identity and community construction.

In this article, the discursive construction of mental health and the role religion plays in its representation are examined using four psychological consultations collected in fall 2016 from Islamweb.net, the largest network for Islamic information. Using computer mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004), intertextuality was identified as a communicative strategy psychologists draw upon to turn mental health consultations into platforms to perpetuate Islamic authoritative discourses (e. g. submission to God, prayer, and collectivity). Mental illnesses were also constructed within the Islamic context as supernatural and cured by religion, rather than as conditions treated through medical and psychological intervention. Intertextually, the authoritative discourses are evoked overtly through direct quotations from the books of Islam and covertly through referencing certain ritualistic discourses (words, themes, and practices) in the opening, main, and closing sections of the consultations. Permeating consultations with religious discourse, and cementing them with the speech acts of warning, scolding, and advice to not think or act otherwise, create religious authority in the context of health online. These actions also maintain Islamic authoritative discourses, and reaffirm Islamic cultural identity, while blurring the lines between medicine and religion online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I investigate how political dissent is linguistically constructed and mitigated in memes that are circulated nationally on WhatsApp in Oman. I do so by drawing upon insights from relational approaches to face, the theorization of communicative strategies as polysemous and ambiguous, and research pertaining to the Islamic practice of lamenting. The data consist of a representative set of memes collected in the summer and fall of 2015 as part of an ethnographic project on social media and Arab identity. I theorize memes as cultural tools that take the form of ‘reasonably hostile’ lament-narratives, which enable citizens in Oman to engage in democracy while saving face. To create lament-memes that voice dissent while mitigating face-attacks, Omanis draw upon various communicative strategies: They use repetition, code choice, hashtags, and different genres; they juxtapose emojis with text; and they manipulate the production and participation frameworks of texts. Collectively, these strategies, which function via intertextuality, allow the concerns to be aired, but indirectly and playfully. The article demonstrates how political dissent is negotiated and mitigated through memes, the agency of social media users, and the validity of conceptualizing memes as cultural tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the use of identity and face management in interpersonal communication among Arab people. It presents online strategies that enable Muslim Arabs to engage in a discussion including self attack and self-praise. It informs that the article contributes towards the development of conceptualizing facework online and investigation of identity construction at the group level.

The article presents an obituary for linguist and educator Ron Scollon.

The article presents information on a disabled Omani individual and illustrates how he overcame the feelings of depression and suicide thoughts after his car accident. The person's quadriplegia is the result of a car accident in 1988. The person started using Microsoft PowerPoint software to create music videos made up of images to alleviate his disability in some sense. This gave him a creative outlet, enabling him to express his feelings about obstacles he faces as a disabled person in his particular sociocultural and familial contexts.

In this paper, I use nexus analysis framework to examine how one quadriplegic man from Oman, named Yahya, directs the course of his present (and his future) through anticipatory discourse. In particular, I analyze conversations between Yahya and me regarding his future as they relate to actions I undertake on his behalf to effect a social change: to secure Yahya, an unmarried man, a permit to hire his own resident nurse/assistant (permits for such hirings are reserved only for married couples in Oman). I demonstrate how Yahya influences me to follow his agenda through constructing a helpless identity in narrative discourse. Reciprocally, I suggest that through the actions Yahya's caregivers subsequently undertake, they succeed in giving him a sense of control over an important aspect of his life (being able to hire his own assistant), and I demonstrate how Yahya subsequently displays agentivity in his narratives. I thus illustrate the interconnectedness of Yahya's anticipatory discourse and his caregivers' (macro-level) actions that cause societal change, as well as the interconnectedness of these actions and the kinds of selves Yahya constructs through anticipatory discourse in private (micro-level) interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]