This study investigates the thematic content of car inscriptions in Jordan. A random corpus of 322 car inscriptions was collected from various types of vehicles by the researchers themselves across IrbidGovernorate in Jordan in the period 12 January to 30 March, 2019. The corpus was then refined excluding graphics, such as drawings, maps, ready-made stickers, graphs, symbols and other images. Each inscription was individually analysed and thematically tagged. Moreover, inscriptions were tagged for the age of the cars that carried them: old (>10 years old) and new (≤10 years old). Lastly, the tags were counted and percentages were extracted. The findings show that car inscriptions in Jordan fall under twelve major themes: religion, philosophy, advertisement, tagging, futility & fun, patriotism, alliance, brands, romance, instructions, politics and greetings. In addition, the results show that old cars are more likely to be written on than new ones. Finally, it is evident that Jordanian car owners and/or drivers use their moving vehicles as an inexpensive and efficient way for voicing their opinions, beliefs, views, emotions and attitudes in addition to being a low-cost advertising venue.

This study investigates the ways in which book titles are manipulated when translated from English into Arabic. One hundred English book titles from various genres whose Arabic translations are manipulated are meticulously studied and analysed against Viezzi’s (2013) model of manipulating translated book titles. The findings show that although Viezzi’s model fits literary works and movies better, it can be useful in analysing the translated titles of different books coming from various genres. Statistically, the findings reveal the following descending order of the most manipulated aspects of English-Arabic translated titles: being more/less explicit (35%), offering different keys to the interpretation of the text (20%), adding/removing genre information (15%), presenting different viewpoints (10%), seducing the target readers (8%), highlighting different characters’ aspects (5%), adding/removing names of characters (3%), adding/removing allusions to other works (3%) and suggesting/removing moral lessons (1%). It is argued that no matter what aspects of translated titles are manipulated, the whole process is done to attract the potential readers in the target market and this involves multiple players, such as translators, editors and publishers.

This study investigates the thematic content of car inscriptions in Jordan. A random corpus of 322 car inscriptions was collected from various types of vehicles by the researchers themselves across Irbid Governorate in Jordan in the period 12 January to 30 March, 2019. The corpus was then refined excluding graphics, such as drawings, maps, ready-made stickers, graphs, symbols and other images. Each inscription was individually analysed and thematically tagged. Moreover, inscriptions were tagged for the age of the cars that carried them: old (>10 years old) and new (≤10 years old). Lastly, the tags were counted and percentages were extracted. The findings show that car inscriptions in Jordan fall under twelve major themes: religion, philosophy, advertisement, tagging, futility & fun, patriotism, alliance, brands, romance, instructions, politics and greetings. In addition, the results show that old cars are more likely to be written on than new ones. Finally, it is evident that Jordanian car owners and/or drivers use their moving vehicles as an inexpensive and efficient way for voicing their opinions, beliefs, views, emotions and attitudes in addition to being a low-cost advertising venue.

This study explores the controversial use of taboo language in Jinn, the first original Jordanian Arabic supernatural Netflix series. Taboo words uttered in each episode of Season 1 of the series (length=159 minutes) were compiled, quantified and categorised according to Ljung’s (2011) thematic categorisation. The results show that 75% of the taboo words fall under ‘major themes’ (scatological (31%), religious/supernatural (20%), sexual activity (12%), sex organ (9%) and mother (3%)) and 25% fall under ‘minor themes’ (prostitution (16%) and animals (9%)) in Ljung’s (2011) thematic divisions. Furthermore, the results show that the first episode has the greatest concentration of taboo words (55%). We argue that the writers/producers intentionally condensed the majority of the taboo words under investigation into the first episode in order to attract the attention of the largest viewership possible because they were aware of how polemical the issue of uttering Jordanian Arabic taboo words on screen was. Finally, it is evident that Jordanian society is still conservative when it comes to using/hearing taboo words in Jordanian cinema and television as demonstrated by the angry reaction of Jordanians in the press, television and social media.

This study investigates the influence of the Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1994 on Arabic journalistic language. Jordanian journalistic language is the source of our data. A representative sample was taken from Al-Rai, a major Jordanian daily in the period 1971–1996. Issues were surveyed, looking for shifts in language prior to and following the Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel. This sample was then contrasted with a recent sample taken from the same daily on October 2009. The findings of this study reveal that the peace process has had a great effect on Arabic journalistic language, especially in the year of its signing. Negative names that were regularly used to refer to Israel at the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict have gradually disappeared from the Jordanian press giving rise to new positive to neutral names.