Purpose. The study reported here aims to identify and classify the pragmatic functions of the frequently used idiomatic expression Yalla, literally ‘let’s’, in Jordanian Spoken Arabic (JSA). Method. The data were collected from 145 university students (males and females) enrolled in different specialisms at two higher education institutions, viz., the University of Jordan and Jadara University. All participants are native speakers of Jordanian Spoken Arabic; their ages ranged from 18 to 22 years. They were divided into three groups; 14 participants gave the data in the mini questionnaire stage which was used to guide and inform proper data collection, 86 completed the extended data collection questionnaire and 45 undertook the acceptability agreement/ judgment task. Results. The study reveals that Yalla conveys 23 pragmatic functions: showing approval / acceptance, signaling the start of an action, spreading enthusiasm, suggesting, commanding/ ordering someone, expediting/ urging, expressing surrender or submission, announcing the onset of a new stage, requesting approval, rest assuring, prompting someone to act in line with an established routine, advising coupled with warning, asking for patience/calming someone down, encouraging/ cheering, drawing attention, reminding, wishing, stimulating, underestimating the importance of a complaint, ridiculing/ mocking, expressing comfort, showing emphasis in addition to showing anger and boredom. Conclusions. The study concludes that the functions of the idiomatic expression Yalla are not equally frequent; nor are they equally acceptable by the Jordanian youth. This is evident in the results of the acceptability judgment task undertaken by the participants, an indication that some of them are more deeply entrenched in the Jordanian youth community than others. The study suggests that future research may investigate the pragmatic functions of Yalla in social contexts and situations other than those examined in this study. It may also involve older age groups as Yalla is more likely to be age sensitive; education level may also turn out to impact the use of this idiomatic expression. Furthermore, as the focus of this study is on Jordanian Spoken Arabic, future research may target the pragmatic functions of Yalla in other Arabic spoken varieties, e.g., Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi, among others.
The study investigates the Jordanian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence through their production of the speech acts of responding to requests, making suggestions, making threats and expressing farewells. The sample of the study consists of 130 Jordanian EFL learners and native speakers. 2600 responses were collected through a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The findings of the study revealed that the tested students showed similarities and differences in performing the strategies of four speech acts. Differences in the students’ performances led to pragmatic failure instances. The pragmatic failure committed by students refers to lack of linguistic competence (i.e., pragmalinguistic failure), sociocultural differences and pragmatic transfer (i.e., sociopragmatic failure). EFL learners employed many mechanisms to maintain their communicative competence; the analysis of the test on speech acts showed learners’ tendency towards using particular strategies, resorting to one strategy related to their grammatical competence, prefabrication, performing long forms, buffing and transfer. The results were also suggestive of the learners’ lack of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge. The implications of this study are for language teachers to teach interlanguage pragmatics explicitly in EFL contexts to draw learners’ attention to both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features, pay more attention to these areas and allocate more time and practice to solve learners’ problems in these areas. The implication of this study is also for pedagogical material designers to provide sufficient and well-organized pragmatic input.
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