A Sociolinguistic Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns in Jordanians’ Facebook Status Updates

Abstract

The study investigates the types of speech acts in the status updates posted by young Jordanian Facebookers. The data were elicited from 200 students from two Jordanian universities, Irbid National University and Jadara University. To deal with content analysis data, the researchers created a special scheme based on Searel's taxonomy. Six speech acts were found in students' status updates on Facebook: expressive, assertive, directives, God's invocation, quotation and humor. Also the study findings evidently indicate that the cultural norms and religious background profoundly rooted in all participants can strongly affect their linguistic choices in their native language. It is hoped that the results would help those involved in teaching and learning Arabic as a second/foreign language.

Gender Differences and Emotional Expressiveness on Facebook: An Analysis of Prosodic Features among Jordanian Facebookers

“…An interesting observation of the data in Figure 3 is that females use markers of "Sigh" more frequently when talking to other females than to males. In Jordanian culture, generally there is a strong sense of paternalism as what most Westerners refer to as "Male Dominance" (Banikalef & Bataineh, 2017). In a male patriarchal society like the population of the current study, findings showed that women used marker of "Sigh"…”

“…According to McNeill (2008), Mcneill (2008), Banikalef and Bataineh (2017), Facebook provides social experts with an unprecedented opportunity to observe behaviors in a real-life setting, test hypotheses, and recruit participants effectively from many different countries and different demographic groups. This study will extend previous research of emotional expressiveness in general, …”

“…through innovative ways (Banikalef & Bataineh, 2017). One of those ways, for example, is the use of punctuation markers.…”

“…Banikalef and Bataineh (2017) state that online user may duplicate letters in an effort to compensate for the lack of paralinguistic cues when they're writing as opposed to speaking. Findings showed that this strategy can be employed different situations to express emotional stances such as frustration, sarcasm, hesitation, and happiness.…”

“…Islam, Jordanian culture is based on a tribal society with a robust sense of Arab identity rooted in its cultural system, particularly in the areas from which the data for this study were collected (Banikalef & Bataineh, 2017). In other words, Jordanian society is too conservative and certain tribal norms govern male and female interaction.…”