How do Jordanians express their birthday wishes on Facebook? A sociolinguistic study

Abstract

This study aims to examine the speech act of congratulations in the Arabic language on the occasion of 'birthday' among young Arab Jordanians who use Facebook to share social life with each other. The data collected is 855 birthday congratulation notes posted by 100 Jordanian Facebook users. The convenience sampling is being used as research methodology through which there are four main categories emerged from the data analysis, namely, Arabic Illocutionary Force Indicating Device' (AIFID), Emotional Statements', (ES), Religious Expressions (RE), and Quotations and Poetic Verses (QPV). Findings revealed that the Jordanian linguistic behaviour and pragmatic norms were profoundly rooted in the social values and religious norms of the Jordanian online speech community. The study concludes with a discussion of important directions for future research, such as examining gender differences in expressing birthday wishes.

Analysis of Congratulation Strategies by Swahili Speakers in Response to Happy Occasions on Facebook Status Updates

“…The use of religious expressions as a strategy is related to participants' belief in either Christian or Islamic religion. This finding is consistent with the finding by Banikalef (2021) who found the use of religious expressions among the Jordanian Arabic Facebook users in response to happy birthday's status updates on Facebook. The use of this strategy among Jordanian Arabic Facebook users was rooted in the Islamic religion, given that the majority (92%) of the people in Jordan are Muslim (Al-Shboul and Maros, 2013).…”

“…The three most preferred strategies were Illocutionary force indicating devices, offers of good wishes and expressions of happiness. Banikalef (2021) explored congratulatory responses expressed on Facebook among the Jordanian Arabics in birthday situations. Eight hundred and fifty-five birthday congratulatory comments were extracted from Facebook as a platform which allows people to share comments across the globe.…”

“…Congratulatory speech act is one of the understudied speech acts in different languages worldwide (Stadler, 2013;Wardat & Alkhateeb, 2020). Most of the existing literature focuses on other types of speech acts like apologies, refusals, greetings, requests, complaints and others with little concentration on the speech act of congratulation (Allami & Nekouzadeh 2011;Banikalef, 2021). This provides an opportunity for more studies to be conducted in those languages, including Kiswahili, in which the speech act of congratulation has not yet been addressed.…”

The characteristics of linguistic features enfolded in suicide notes

“…The linguistic and social norms of a society govern the way its speakers use particular linguistic expressions to carry out certain speech functions (Banikalef, 2021). Strategies are used to express the meanings of intended messages among speakers (Hassouneh & Zibin, 2021).…”

Reseña del libro: Mancera Rueda, A. y Pano Alamán, A. (2020). La opinión pública en la red. Análisis pragmático de la voz de los ciudadanos

“…Mancera Rueda y Pano Alamán 2013a) son principalmente adulatorias en el sentido de que predominan los comentarios positivos entre contactos -cabe preguntarse si por solidaridad o por narcisismo-, en especial cuando se conocen entre sí (Maíz Arévalo 2013). Un ejemplo podrían ser las felicitaciones de cumpleaños en Facebook (Theodoropoulou 2015;Karamalak 2016;Banikalef 2021). En el décimo capítulo, Pano Alamán confirma los hallazgos de Maíz Arévalo (2013) sobre los elogios en Facebook: frente a la conversación cara a cara, las respuestas suelen ser implícitas (emoticonos, GIF, botón de "Me gusta"…), lo que acaba fomentando "una marcada polarización ideológica" y cámaras de eco (p. 183).…”