The Relationship between the Usage of the Discourse Marker Cha and Speakers’ Educational Background: A Discourse-Pragmatic Analysis

Muna  Al-abbad; Mahmoud  Al-qudah

doi:10.35516/hum.v50i5.5831

Authors

Muna Al-abbad Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0668-3746
Mahmoud Al-qudah Department of English, Collage of Arts, Princess Sumaya University, Amman, Jordan https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2835-5612

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v50i5.5831

Keywords:

Oral discourse, discourse markers, education

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to provide a discourse-pragmatic analysis of the functions of the Discourse Marker (DM) Cha when employed in Iraqi Arabic oral discourse. It also investigates if there is a relationship between the speaker's educational level and the use of the DM Cha with respect to its functions, type choices, and frequency of occurrence.

Methods: The sample consists of 460 excerpts retrieved from two conversational contexts: in-person conversations and informal phone calls. Brinton’s (1996) framework has been applied in the analysis of the functions of the DM Cha at the textual and interpersonal levels of discourse. A chi-squared test has been utilized to find out to what extent well-educated informants and those with limited education are alike or different in terms of the functional use of this marker and its type-choices and whether the variation in frequency of the DM Cha is actually significant or can be attributed to chance.

Results: This paper shows that there are no statistically significant differences in terms of function. However, a statistically significant difference is in favor of informants with limited education concerning type-choices and frequency of occurrence. Generally, well-educated informants seem to be more sensitive to the use of this marker as a less prestigious marker. Undoubtedly, this is attributed to the impact of education that is almost linked to the standardization and urbanization processes.

Conclusions: The study recommends the need for further investigations to validate these results with reference to other DMs and social variables like age and social class

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Abdel-Jawad, H. (1981). Lexical and phonological variation in spoken Arabic in Amman. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Abdel-Jawad, H. (1986a). Toward a Scientific Entrance to the Study of Modern Arabic Dialects. Arab Journal of Language Studies, 5(1), 63-94.

Abdel-Jawad, H. (1987). Cross-Dialectical Variation in Arabic: Competing Prestigious Forms. Language in society, 16, 359-368.

Abdulkhaliq, A. (2014). Yamawwad: A Discourse and Pragmatic Marker in Iraqi Arabic. World Journal of English Language, 4(2), 30-39. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v4n2p30.

Abdulkhaliq, A. (2015). ʔadi as a Discourse Marker in Spoken Iraqi Arabic. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 5(7), 1352-1360. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0507.06.

Abdulkhaliq, A. (2016). A Pragmatic Study of YaNI, an Iraqi Arabic DM, and English Equivalents. European Journal of Language Studies, 3(2), 57-97.

Adai, S., & Majeed, S. (2020). The Use of DMs in Iraqi Arabic: A Pragmatic Perspective. Talent Development & Excellence, 12(3), 43-50.

Afrianto, D. (2018). Functions of DMs: A Case Study of a Speaking Class at Tertiary Education. LITERA, 17(1), 70-89.

Aijmer, K. (2002). English discourse particles: evidence from a corpus. (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co.

Alami, M. (2016). An Investigation of Pragmatic Functions and Position of Prevalent Persian DMs Used in Casual Conversations among Tehrani Speakers. IJALEL, 5(1), 250- 263. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283497808.

Andersen, G. (2001). Pragmatic markers and sociolinguistic variation: A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. (4th ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.84.

Angermuller, J. (2014). Poststructuralist discourse analysis: subjectivity in enunciative pragmatics. Springer.

Bakir, M. (1986). The Differences in the Approximation to Standard Arabic: A Case Study. Anthropological linguistics, 28(1), 3-9.

Bakir, M. (1987). The Linguistic Difference between the Two Sexes in Approximating Prestigious Dialects. Unpublished Master thesis.

Blakemore, D. (2002). Relevance and linguistic meaning: The semantics and pragmatics of DMs. (5th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486456.

Borderia Pons, S. (2008). Do DMs exist? On the treatment of DMs in Relevance Theory. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 1411-1434.

Brinton, L. (1996). Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse functions. (4th ed.). Berling and New York: Mouto de Gruyter.

Brinton, L. (2008). The Comment Clause in English Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Developments (Studies in English Language). (5th ed.). Cambridge: CUP. https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/195112.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Clift, R. & Helani, F. (2010). Inshallah: Religious invocations in Arabic topic transition. Language in Society, 39, 357-382.

Converse, P. (1972). Change in the American Electorate. In The Human Meaning of Social Change. New York: Russell Sage.)

Crystal, D. (1988). Another look at well, you know. English Today, 13, 47-49.

Aquino, A. E. (2003). Diferencias de Género y Edad en la Inteligencia Emocional de un Grupo de Internautas.[Gender differences and Age in a Group of Web Browsers' Emotional Intellignece]. Un published Thesis. Universidad Inca Gracilazo de la Vega. Facultad de Psicología y Ciencias Sociales. Lima-Perú.

Fraser, B. (1999). What are DMs? Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 931-952.

Fung, A. (2003). Deliberative democracy and international labor standards. Governance, 16(1), 51-71. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0491.t01-1-00204.

Gaines, P. (2011). The Multifunctionality of Discourse Operator Okay: Evidence from a police interview. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 3291–3315. www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma.

Gravetter, F., & Wallnau, L. (2007). Statistics for the behavioral sciences. (1st ed.). Australia: Belmont, CA.

Gumperz, J. (1972/ 1986). Introduction. In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. London: Blackwell.

Haeri, N. (1997). The Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class, and Education. (1st ed.). London: Kegan Paul International.

Hanafi, M., & Puteh, F. (2017). Quantitative Data Analysis: Choosing Between SPSS, PLS and AMOS in Social Science Research. International Interdisciplinary Journal of Scientific research, 3(1), 14-25.

Hassan, Q. (2016). The grammaticalization of the modal particles in south Iraqi Arabic. Romano-Arabica, 16(16), 45-54.

Heisler, T. (1996). OK, a dynamic discourse marker in Montreal French. Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory and Analysis. Stanford University: CSLI Publications, 293312.

Holes, C. (2001). Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia. I: Glossary. (2nd ed.). Leiden: Brill.

Johnstone, B. (2002). Discourse Analysis. (1st ed.). Malden: Blackwell.

Ingham, B. (1973). Urban and Rural Arabic in Khūzistān. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 36 (3), 533-55.

Jabeur, M. (1987). A Sociolinguistic study in Tunisia: Rades. Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading.

Kanakri, M., & Mohammad, A. (2013). The Discourse Analysis of “ʔa:di” in Jordanian Spoken Arabic. International Journal of English Linguistics, 3(6), 59-63.

Khalaf, E. (1991). Phonological variation in the speech of women from three urban areas in Jordan. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex, Colchester.

Khalaf, E. (2002). Education as a Speaker Variable. In Language Contact and Language Conflict in Arabic. Variations on a sociolinguistic theme (pp. 41-53). London: Routledge Curzon.

Khalaf, M. (1991). A sociolinguistic study of women’s speech in Qatar. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex, Colchester.

Khtani, A. (1992). The impact of social change on linguistic behaviour: phonological variation in spoken Arabic, Asir, Saudi Arabia. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex, Colchester.

Al Rousan, R., Al Harahsheh, A., & Huwari, F. (2020). The pragmatic functions of the discourse marker bas in Jordanian Spoken Arabic: Evidence from a corpus. discourse.

Mei, W. (2012). A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Pragmatic Markers: I mean and you know in Native and Non-native Conversation. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Liverpool, Liverpool.

Muller-Kessler, C. (2003). Aramaic 'k', lyk' and Iraqi Arabic 'aku, māku: The Mesopotamian particles of existence. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 123, 641-646.

Piurko, E. (2015). DMs: their function and distribution in the media and legal discourse. Unpublished MA Thesis, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences,Vilnius, Lithuania.

Redeker, G. (1991). Linguistic markers of discourse structure. Linguistics, 29(6), 1139-1172

Saeed, A. (1993). Urbanisation and linguistic variation and change: a sociolinguistic study of the impact of urbanisation on the linguistic behaviour of urbanised rural immigrants in Hijaz, Saudi Arabia. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex, Colchester.

Salkind, N. (2007). Exploring research. Upper Saddle River. (1st ed.). NJ: Prentice Hall.

Schiffrin, D. (1987). DMs. (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schourup, L. (1999). Discourse makers. Tutorial overview. Lingua, 107, 227-265.

Trujillo Saez, F. (2003). Culture in Writing: DMs in English and Spanish Student Writing. Tadea seuliber de Amicitia, 5, 345-364. http://www.ugr.es/~ftsaez/research.pdf.

Spolskey, B. (1998). Sociolinguistics. (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University press.

Stubbs, M. (1983). Discourse analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural language. (1st ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago: Press.

Swan, M. (1980). Practical English Usage. (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zulfa, A. (2016). DMs in EFL Learners' Representations. MA thesis, University of Maulana Malik Ibrahim State Islamic University.