How do Jordanians express their birthday wishes on Facebook? (A sociolinguistic study)

Ala’eddin Abdullah Banikalef

Abstract


This study aims to examine the speech act of congratulations in Arabic language on the occasion of ‘birthday’ among young Arab Jordanian who use Facebook to share social life with each others. The data collected is  855 birthday congratulation notes issued by 100 Jordanian Facebook users. The convenience sampling is being used as research methodology through which there are four dominant categories emerged from the study, namely, Arabic Illocutionary Force Indicating Device’ (AIFID), Emotional Statements’, (ES), Religious Expressions (RE), and Quotations and Poetic Verses (QPV). Findings revealed that the Jordanian linguistic behavior and pragmatic norms were profoundly rooted in the cultural and religious beliefs of the Jordanian speech community. The study concludes with a discussion of important directions for future research, such as examining gender differences in expressing birthday wishes.  


Keywords


birthday wishes; online congratulation; Facebook; Jordanian linguistic behavior

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