The current paper investigates the congratulation speech act among Jordanian Facebook users in terms of patterns and linguistic forms with reference to the congratulation strategies adopted in response to a birthday Facebook status posted on the occasion of the 60th birthday of His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al-Hussein. The types of positive politeness strategies attested in these congratulatory forms are also tackled in this study. The comments posted by Jordanian Facebook users on this occasion formed the data necessary for the purpose of this study. The data analysis revealed that the dominant congratulation strategy among Jordanian Facebookers is Illocutionary force indicating device, and the use of proverbs and sayings is the least used strategy. As for the strategies of politeness in the congratulatory forms among Jordanian Facebook users, the data analysis revealed that the dominant strategies are giving gifts to the listener and in-group identity marker (usage of address forms); exaggerate and seek agreement (safe topic) strategies are the least used ones. These results were discussed in light of the theory of speech act (Austin, 1962) and the theory of politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987). The religious beliefs, cultural values, and social norms of the Facebook users appeared to be influential with respect to these politeness and congratulation strategies. The study also touches upon several aspects related to the pragmatic competence of Jordanian Facebook users.

This study highlights the compliment response strategies of Jordanian adolescent students, and discusses the respective influences of gender and social power on the production of these strategies. The participants were 37 male and 37 female Jordanian adolescent students at private secondary schools in Amman, with ages ranging from 14–16. They responded to eight discourse completion test situations translated into Arabic to ensure the participants’ understanding. These eight scenarios resembled academic situations which students might face in their daily life, and were intended to represent interactions with persons of different social standing/power. The resulting data were analysed based on the classification system found in previous research. The results revealed that both male and female participants preferred to accept compliments over using non-acceptance strategies. The most frequent strategies used by both groups were combination strategies and acceptance strategies, while nonacceptance strategies and face relationship-related response strategies were the least common. However, there were differences in the preference and frequency of use of other compliment response strategies such as amendment and no acknowledgment strategies. The participants’ gender and the social power of the speakers were also found to influence the choice and perception of politeness. For example, the males tended to use more acceptance strategies compared to the females. They also preferred different rank order of compliment response strategies when the hearer was of lower status. Finally, some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were briefly discussed by the researchers.

This study is a verbal-pictorial analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war in Jordanian cartoons. It examines socio-political contexts related to the Russia-Ukraine war through a semiotic analysis of selected political cartoons posted on the official Facebook accounts of two well-known Jordanian cartoonists, Emad Hajjaj and Osama Hajjaj, between January and September, 2022. These cartoons show the conflict through the eyes of Arabs, who may be considered neutral and distanced from the conflict. As such, the study provides novel insights for semiotics by analysing signs in verbo-pictorial entities and demonstrating how verbal and visual signs can work synergistically to connote powerful messages. Sixty-eight political cartoons were collected and classified into the themes of: negotiation, alliance, economic consequences (the food and energy crisis), the Russia-Ukraine war and COVID-19, the refugee crisis, Putin vs. peace, nuclear war, and the mocking of Putin’s policies. We selected a representative cartoon from each theme and analysed their messages via the Roland Barthes model (1967, 1977) according to three types of message: verbal (i.e., text), non-verbal (i.e., denoted visual signs), and symbolic. These verbal and visual signs were used to clarify and interpret the symbolic messages of the selected cartoons. The thematic findings reflect the views and attitudes of an Arab community (Jordanian, in this case) regarding the Russian-Ukraine war.

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