Search

Abstract This study explores the construction of authorial stance in English and Arabic newspaper editorials. To achieve this objective, the study examines a corpus of 80 newspaper editorials retrieved from two newspapers: The first publishes in English (The Guardian, the UK), and the second publishes in Arabic (Addustour, Jordan). The study adopts Hyland’s taxonomy of stance, which includes features of hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions. To analyse the data, the study follows a mixed-methods approach to identify differences, if any, in the construction of authorial stance in the two languages in the editorial genre. A functional analysis is carried out to capture these markers within contexts. The results reveal that the most frequently used stance devices in Arabic editorials are the attitude markers, followed by boosters, hedges and self-mentions. Contrariwise, the findings showcase that the most frequently used stance device is hedging, followed by attitude markers, boosters, and self-mention. The study concludes that the two languages differ in the way they construct stance in editorials, a conclusion that provides implications for second-language professional writing teachers and students. The findings provide insights that might enhance the skills of argumentative writing in English for media courses.

This study investigates the metaphorical representations of physical pain amongst Algerian Arabic speakers. To uncover these conceptualisations, an oral Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was administered to 30 Algerian university students. A qualitative approach was used to analyse the data and generate the conceptual metaphors used. Grounded in Kövecses model of metaphorical conceptualisations, this research unveils that Algerian Arabic speakers utilise nine distinct metaphorical conceptualisations when portraying physical pain/discomfort: evaluative metaphors, fire metaphors, sharp object metaphors, container metaphors, animal metaphors, creeping insect metaphors, burden metaphors, swing metaphors, and physical force metaphors. These metaphors are further explicated in light of linguistic and cultural backgrounds to shed light on the intricate weave of metaphors in Algerian Arabic, underscoring their pivotal role in encapsulating physical and emotional experiences. The study recommends further scholarly research into the manifold metaphorical renderings of diverse emotional states across Arab communities.

The cognate accusative (CA) in Arabic grammar is a unique structure that has no direct equivalent in English. This paper analyses the various strategies and procedures that the translator used to translate CA instances and assesses the success of these strategies. The significance of the study lies in its attempt to explore the complexities inherent in the CA when translated from Arabic into English, as well as the special difficulties accruing to translation because of the grammatical structure being nonexistent in English. The research particularly looks into The Call of the Curlew, the English translation of Taha Hussein’s novel Doa’a Al-Karawn, which serves as a model to analyse the Arabic CAs and their English counterparts. It underscores Taha Hussein’s novel ‘Doa’a Al-Karawn’ as a case study, highlighting the novel’s ‘untranslatable’ label by some scholars due to its intricate linguistic features. To evaluate the naturalness and acceptability of the renditions, a questionnaire that includes six examples is disseminated to 91 translation experts and 18 native English speakers. The results show the difficulties surrounding the translation of the CA as indicated by the translator, who states in the introduction to his translation that Hussein’s literary production has been labelled ‘untranslatable’ by some scholars because of the literary language of the novel. In particular, the study found that the translator used strategies of the use of adverbs, omission, derivation, idiomatic expressions, explanatory translation, nominal descriptive phrases, phrasal verbs, adjectives, addition, prepositional adverbs, and intensifiers, with varying frequencies. The findings indicate that adverbs and omission are the most commonly employed strategies, reflecting the difficulties in conveying the CA’s emphasis and aesthetic function in translation. The study, therefore, concludes with the main strategies used to render this Arabic-specific structure into English based on the analysis of the selected work of literature and the quantitative results of the questionnaire.

AbstractThis study explored the compliment response (CR) strategies used by Emirati Arabic speakers. In addition, the study analysed the role of gender and the degree of formality in the use of CR strategies in this Arabic dialect. To this end, the study recruited 56 (28 males and 28 females) undergraduate students from the University of Sharjah (UAE). A written discourse completion task (DCT) consisting of 10 (five formal and five informal) scenarios was used to elicit CRs from the participants. The results showed that the Emiratis’ most frequently used major strategy is the Acceptance strategy, with Returning the Compliment and Expressing Gratitude being the most used sub-strategies and Agreeing and Encouraging being the least frequently used. The study shows that variations in the construction and realisation of speech acts exist due to gender and degree of formality. In particular, although both genders made use of the same major strategy, they showed differences in the use of the sub-strategies according to the (in)formality of the situation.

Abstract Although euphemism has been studied in many Arabic dialects, it has not yet received due attention in Iraqi Arabic (IA). This study investigates the use of euphemistic strategies by IA speakers and the effect of gender and degree of formality on the use of these strategies. In order to achieve these objectives, a discourse completion test (DCT) was developed and distributed to 160 (80 males and 80 females) Iraqi university students. The data were analysed quantitively and qualitatively using strategies adopted from a number of previous frameworks. The findings show that the participants used a variety of euphemistic strategies, with the deletion strategy being the most frequently used when talking about the topic of death, the fuzzy words strategy for the topic of mental illness, and the implication strategy for the topic of obesity. The analysis also revealed that the degree of formality plays a key role in the use of euphemistic strategies in the topic of mental illness and that gender plays an effective role in the use of euphemistic strategies in all three topics.

This study explores the effect of the workplace on language use by Jordanian working women in terms of variety, lexis, and pronunciation. To this end, the study adopted a triangulation of research methods utilising qualitative and quantitative analyses, i.e. a questionnaire, ethnographic field notes, and interviews. Ethnographic field notes were taken for Jordanian working women in two different settings over three weeks. The questionnaire was distributed to two groups: an experimental group of 246 Jordanian working women in three different working environments in Amman, Jordan and a second group of 54 non-working women as the control group. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 working women from the experimental group. The recordings of the interviews were transcribed and analysed. The results show that the workplace strongly affects Jordanian working women’s language use, and that solidarity and professionalism are the main reasons that drive Jordanian women to change their language in their workplaces.

AbstractThis descriptive study aims to examine English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ experiences in a study abroad context and the adaptation strategies they use to deal with academic and socio-cultural challenges. It also aims to show how the students’ experiences and resilience affect their self-efficacy. The data are collected from nine Algerian female students who were enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Jordan at the time of data collection. Face-to-face interviews and a self-efficacy scale were used to collect data from the participants. The findings reveal that the student participants faced many academic and socio-cultural challenges in the target context but managed to overcome them using adaptation strategies such as familiarizing themselves with the new teaching context and developing their self-efficacy. The results obtained from the self-efficacy scale show that most of the students developed a sense of self-efficacy, and that their study abroad experiences positively affected their level of self-efficacy.

This study aims to explore the difficulties involved in translating similar plural nouns in the Holy Quran from Arabic into English. It specifically investigates 21 plural nouns derived from seven singular nouns in the Holy Quran and discusses their exegetic contexts and translation into English. To achieve this aim, the study tracks singular nouns where three plurals are derived from each of them. The meaning of each singular noun is looked up in Al-Mu’jam Al-Waseet, typically the most reliable Arabic dictionary. These meanings are also checked in Ibn Katheer’s explication, an accredited Islamic exegesis. The study also compares the translation of these nouns into English in two translations: Translation of the meanings of the Noble Qur’an in the English language by Al-Hilali and Khan (1983) and The meaning of the Holy Qur’an by Ali (1999). The findings show that broken plurals which derive from the same root or singular noun are slightly different in meaning. This nuance is a result of the morphological pattern of the plural. These patterns may denote abundance, rarity, size, form, or time. These differences are actually ignored in translation, i.e. similar broken plurals are rendered into English as if they were synonyms in Arabic, which is not the case.

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.

This study investigates the use and linguistic properties of refusal strategies by Jordanians and Syrian refugees in Jordan. To achieve this objective, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), consisting of 10 situations: three requests, three offers, two invitations, and two suggestions was used. The participants were 40 (20 male and 20 female) Jordanians and 40 (20 male and 20 female) Syrian refugees in Jordan. The mixed-method data analysis resulted in a total of 1351 refusals: 719 Jordanian refusals and 632 Syrian refugees’ refusals. The refusals were classified by semantic formulas, directness (a dimension of communication style), and frequency of semantic formulas. The results show that the two groups utilize different semantic formulas with different frequencies when making their refusals. The two groups used a different number of direct and indirect formulas. Although the two groups belong to the Arabic culture, the differences were significant. One main difference is that Jordanians’ refusals were more direct and were often expressed as negative willingness, while the Syrian refugees’ refusals were less direct, providing an explanation of their refusals. The results also indicate that gender is a significant variable where females in the two samples tended to respond with lengthy responses when making their refusals, employing at least three refusal strategies.

This study investigates the efficacy of the type of instruction (i.e., perception-based vs. production-based) on second language (L2) pronunciation acquisition in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. To achieve this objective, 60 tertiary-level Jordanian learners of English were recruited and put into two groups (30 learners in each group). Group A received 6 weeks of perception-based instruction on both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of English pronunciation, and Group B received production-based instruction over the same period and on the same aspects of pronunciation. Progress in L2 pronunciation was assessed at three time points (i.e., week 1, week 6, and week 14). Pre-, post- and delayed post-tests were run to achieve the study’s objective. A statistical analysis was conducted to analyse the data. The results show that both groups demonstrated a significant improvement in L2 pronunciation accuracy; in particular, Group A which received perception-based instruction demonstrated higher gains in segmental, syllabic, and prosodic aspects while Group B which received production-based instruction demonstrated more improvement in both global (i.e., comprehensibility) and temporal (i.e., fluency) aspects of pronunciation. However, both groups demonstrated similar gains on the delayed post-test. The findings provide implications for L2 pronunciation learners and teachers on the impact of the type of instruction on the addressed aspects of pronunciation.

This study investigated the use and functions of metadiscourse markers in English as a foreign language (EFL) virtual classroom during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study examined which metadiscourse markers--interactive or interactional--were used more frequently and how they were employed in an EFL context. It explored two interactive metadiscourse resources (code glosses and evidentials) and two interactional metadiscourse resources (attitude and engagement markers). The study utilized a mixed-method approach, using Hyland's (2004) two-componential taxonomy, to analyze a corpus of 303,148 words from 35 online lectures (90 minutes each) delivered by three university instructors in the UAE. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to determine any significant differences in the use of these resources and their subcategories. The results revealed that the three instructors used more interactional than interactive resources. The qualitative analysis showed that code glosses and evidentials were primarily used to manage the flow of information, provide elaboration on propositional content, and provide evidence to support arguments. They were also employed to achieve cohesion and logical coherence in online classrooms. In contrast, attitude and engagement markers were used to engage students and signal the instructors' attitudes toward their material and audience. The study concludes with pedagogical implications for EFL instructors, students, and syllabus designers to foster social justice and fairness in the online learning environment, ensuring all students feel valued and empowered in their educational journey.

This study explores the use of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in political discourse and their role in persuasion. To this end, the study examines four political speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton, an American politician. The speeches were retrieved from YouTube, transcribed and analysed following Dafouz-Milne’s (2008) model of metadiscourse markers. In addition, Mai’s (2016) taxonomy—which draws on Aristotle’s model of persuasion—was used to identify the persuasive functions of metadiscourse markers. The data were analysed qualitatively. The findings show that Hillary Clinton used a variety of metadiscourse markers; in particular, the interpersonal markers were found more frequently used than the textual markers. Within the interpersonal markers, commentaries with the inclusive “we” was the most frequently used, and within the textual markers, the logical markers with the additive “and” were dominant in her speeches. In terms of persuasion, the study found that Clinton used metadiscourse markers to achieve logical appeal (i.e., logos) more often than affective appeals (i.e., pathos). The results are discussed in light of theories of metadiscourse and political discourse.

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.

This study aims to investigate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ misbehaviours in class and their students’ reactions to these misbehaviours. Towards this end, 60 classroom observations of six English language teachers (N=10 each) were conducted at a public school in Jordan. Moreover, a survey was used to elicit 201 students’ reactions to their teachers’ misbehaviours by gauging their satisfaction with the teachers’ communication styles. Finally, the teacher participants were interviewed in order to more deeply understand why such misbehaviours occurred. Analysis of the data is grounded in the Expectancy Violation Theory. The results revealed that when the mean value of teachers’ communication style was more than 3 on a 5-point Likert Scale, the students often perceived their teachers as being positive, and the students compensated most of their teachers’ misbehaviours. However, when the mean value was below 3, the teachers were perceived as being negative, and the students reciprocated for most of the misbehaviours. The results also showed that the students are more tolerant towards their teachers’ misbehaviours as long as the teacher is perceived to be positive. The study provides insights into understanding the student-teacher relationship in EFL classes.

Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis edited by Eric Friginal and Jack A. Hardy, Routledge, 2021, 662pp., $250.00 (Hardcover). ISBN 9780367201814.

This article investigates the discourse functions of ʕaad in Jordanian Arabic (JA), based on a naturally occurring corpus which consists of 20 sociolinguistic interviews with 60 participants. Upon analysing all occurrences of ʕaad in the corpus, we propose that ʕaad is a discourse marker that provides supplementary information that relates the speaker's attitude (i.e., disagreement) to the proposition expressed by the host sentence. Additionally, this article offers a syntactic account of this discourse marker arguing that its distribution (and interpolation) can be syntactically captured. The syntactic analysis is based on the notion of grounding (Wiltschko and Heim, 2016; Thoma, 2016; Wiltschko, 2017a, 2017b). We essentially argue that the marker ʕaad heads the so-called Speaker-oriented Ground Phrase, following its main function in expressing the commitment that the speaker displays towards the proposition rather than asking the addressee for a request of how to respond to the utterance. In so doing, this article adds credence to proposals under which discourse markers can be incorporated within sentence grammar with no need for an extra level of grammar representation (see Potts, 2005; de Vries, 2012; Wiltschko and Heim, 2016).

This study aims to identify the intensifiers used in Ammani Arabic (henceforth AA) and to explore whether or not their use is socially constrained by age, gender, and education. Furthermore, the study attempts to find whether the use of intensifiers throughout this dialect is internally constrained through the examination of the effects of a set of linguistic factors (i.e., the semantic class of adjectives, the function of adjectives [attributive vs. predicative], the position of intensifiers (after the adjective or before it), the polarity of adjectives, and emotionality of adjectives) on the distribution of the intensifiers under investigation. To this end, the study draws on the variationist approach proposed by Labov (1972) as a theoretical construct which focuses on sociolinguistic variations in dialects and investigates how variations can be structured. The corpus is based on just over 15 h of digitized recordings obtained from 32 speakers stratified by age, gender, and education. Then, all tokens including the intensifier (ʔikθi:r) and its variants [ʔikθi::r], [ʔikθi:r ʔikθi:r], and [dʒidan] are extracted and coded. The coded data are afterwards analysed using Goldvarb X, so as to obtain the distribution of the variants, their frequencies and significance regarding their variable use. The results show that the most used intensifier among AA speakers is the intensifier [ʔikθi:r], the social factors (age, gender, and education) have no significant effect on the use of intensifiers in AA, and the intensifier [ʔikθi:r] is found to significantly correlate with the semantic class of adjectives of ‘human propensity’ and to occur more often predicatively in the sentence.

Stance is a feature of academic writing that refers to how writers interact and engage with their readers by means of linguistic devices. This study focuses on the grammatical devices—and semantic distinctions thereof—that are employed by academic writers of English to express stance in research article abstracts in the areas of applied linguistics (AL) and literature (L). To this end, a corpus of 120 research article abstracts (60 in the area of AL and another 60 in that of L) was built and analysed using SPSS and following Biber et al.’s (1999) framework of grammatical devices of stance. The abstracts were extracted from high-quality journals in the respective areas: Applied Linguistics and English: Journal of the English Association. Both are ISI journals and published by Oxford Academic Publishing. A mixed-method approach, applying quantitative and qualitative measures, was adopted to answer the two questions: How is stance grammatically expressed in AL research article abstracts and L research article abstracts, and How is the expression of stance in AL research article abstracts similar to/different from that in L ones? The findings are construed in light of theories of academic discourse and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The results reveal that there are important similarities and differences in the extent to which and the means through which stance is expressed in AL research article abstracts and L research article abstracts. In particular, the findings show that both AL and L abstracts were similar in the most frequently used stance marker which is the stance complement clause. However, they were different in the frequency of use of other devices. The study provides insights into the ways academic writers express stance in various fields which better our ability to write research article abstracts.

This study investigates the use of concessive discourse markers (DMs) in Jordanian Arabic (JA), particularly relying on a corpus analysis of naturally occurring data. It argues that there are mainly two types of concession in JA: extrinsic concession and intrinsic concession. The two types of concession are shown to differ from each other with respect to Kratzer’s compatibility of propositions. Intrinsic concession occurs when a speaker has a manifest intention/meaning that does not cause hearers to question its occurrence. This type is realized when one discourse segment is not compatible (i.e., does not normally happen at the same time) with another discourse segment (e.g., somebody is so rich, but he/she lives in a very poor house). Extrinsic concession, on the other hand, occurs when a speaker has a latent intention/meaning that normally causes hearers to question its occurrence. This type of concession emerges when discourse segments are compatible with each other (i.e., may normally happen at the same time), in which case the made-up concession is enforced by the speaker (e.g., somebody is poor, but he/she lives in a poor house). The study shows that certain discourse markers in JA are preferred over others in each type.

Many studies in different contexts have examined both English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ convictions about the connection between nativeness in English and professional teacher identity; however, very few studies solely focused on that connection in second language (L2) pronunciation teaching. This paper explores EFL university students’ experiences in learning English pronunciation from ‘native’- and ‘nonnative’- English-speaking teachers (NESTs and NNESTs). Based on an empirical study of undergraduates-prospective English language teachers-at the University of Jordan, the paper finds that most students still view ‘nativeness’ as the main descriptor of effective teaching, strongly believing NESTs to be the ‘authority’ and source of ‘correctness,’ both of which convictions are emblematic of native-speakerism, which in turns leads to both cultural panic and voicelessness on the part of NNESTs and learners. The study concludes with calling for the need to raise awareness among EFL students of the various manifestations of English as a global language-particularly the irrelevance of nativeness to effective teaching-and incorporating NNESTs into teaching L2 pronunciation and rejecting their marginalisation in teaching pronunciation in EFL contexts.

Congratulating others is an essential aspect of human social interaction and a speech act that is realised differently in languages. This study aims to investigate the pragmalinguistic realisations of the speech act of congratulating in Kabyle and Jordanian Arabic (JA) by comparing the strategies that Kabyle-speaking and JA-speaking students employ when offering congratulations. The data are analysed with reference to social status, gender and cultural background of the participants. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which included four situations of different social statuses is used to collect data from 30 JA-speaking students (15 males and 15 females) at the University of Jordan and 30 Kabyle-speaking students (15 males and 15 females) from three different universities in Algeria region of Kabylie. Elwood's (2004) framework is adopted in the classification of strategies. A mixed-method approach is applied in the analysis with the frequency of strategies being quantitatively analysed and the semantic formulas vis-à-vis status are qualitatively analysed. The results show that there are slight differences in the use of congratulating strategies between the two groups of participants, and these are discussed in terms of sociopragmatic and sociocultural dimensions of variational pragmatics.

The fusion of education with the digital world is still a developing and crucial phenomenon, especially in light of the growth of metaverse applications and the lingering effects of pandemic-induced educational changes. Learning about the efficacy of platforms like Gather.town becomes increasingly important in this situation. This study explores the changing educational environment, focusing on the widely used technique of small group discussions. Our main goal is to compare the effects of such group discussions in real classrooms against the online setting made possible by websites like Gather.town, especially regarding academic performance. We assessed two separate groups of students using a highly controlled experimental method. One group engaged in traditional, face-to-face small group discussions, while the other participated in discussions within the virtual realm of Gather.town. Our research produced notable results, showing a significant difference in academic achievement between the two modes of interaction. Unexpectedly, the online environment displayed higher standards of academic success. These findings highlight the potential effectiveness of digital platforms in educational initiatives. While conventional, face-to-face dialogues still have significance, incorporating digital technologies could result in equal or better educational outcomes. In essence, this research offers insightful viewpoints to the continuing discussion concerning hybridized learning strategies in the modern educational environment. By highlighting the part played by digital platforms in influencing pedagogical practices, it highlights the potential for such approaches to benefit the future of education.