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 pragmatic functions of the discourse marker bas (Lit. But) in Jordanian Spoken Arabic. To this end, a corpus of 24 dyadic conversations, consisting of 93313 words were obtained from natural conversations of native speakers of Jordanian Arabic (males and females). 1113 instances of bas were identified in the data. This study is based on Fraser’s (2006) grammatical-pragmatic framework. Qualitative methods were employed to answer the question of the study. The analysis was based on the pragmatic functions introduced by Brinton (1996) and Fraser (2006). The data analysis reveals that the DM bas serves the following pragmatic functions in JSA: initiating a topic, signaling topic change, closing a turn, ending a conversation, indicating speaker’s hesitancy, mitigating Face Threatening Acts, making a correction, attracting hearer’s attention, expressing restrictions and conditions, showing disbelief and indicating a question, providing interpretation, showing contrast, expressing regret , showing agreement, indicating emphasis, and finally filling in gaps in an interaction. Finally, this study suggests that DMs in Arabic play a vital role in people’s daily communication; therefore, they should not be neglected by linguists.

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.

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