Discourse Analysis and Pragmatic Functions of A’fiah in Jordanian Spoken Arabic

Abstract

The current study explores the pragmatic functions of the discourse marker a’fiah (عفية) in Jordanian spoken Arabic from a pragma-discourse perspective. This exploration was carried out through collecting data by means of face-to-face interviews with twenty-five Jordanian Arabic native speakers who were asked to employ such a discourse marker within a real-life context. The results of the study reveal that the discourse marker a’fiah was used to fulfill eleven pragmatic functions according to the context in which it occurred: to scold, to scorn, to show happiness, to make a threat, to express admiration, anger, blame, approval, disapproval, annoyance and surprise. They also reveal that expressing admiration was the most dominant function performed by a’fiah in Jordanian Arabic, while scolding, scorning, making a threat and expressing approval were the least dominant functions. These conclusions are supported by in-depth quantitative and qualitative analyses.