Papers by Dr Emad M Al-Saidat
International journal of English language and literature studies, Mar 7, 2024
Contribution/ Originality: This study considerably extends the existing body of research addressi... more Contribution/ Originality: This study considerably extends the existing body of research addressing how bilinguals process the under-researched metaphorical and metonymical polysemous words by comparison with a group of native English speakers to explore ambiguity resolution and word recognition. The findings contribute to our understanding of the role of vocabulary knowledge among bilinguals in word recognition and processing in EFL contexts.
International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, Jan 3, 2024
In the context of war, political speeches employ emotionally charged language in the form of ling... more In the context of war, political speeches employ emotionally charged language in the form of linguistic devices, in an attempt to persuade the audience and appeal to their emotions. This study examines how the Russia-Ukraine War was presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Joe Biden, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This study identifies the linguistic features as well as the rhetorical strategies employed in the three presidential speeches which reflect the power and dominance of the conflicting parties in the Russia-Ukraine war. Therefore, a critical discourse analysis of three presidential speeches on the Russia-Ukraine War was conducted. The study analyzed and compared the use of vocabulary, semantic structure, grammatical devices, and rhetorical strategies used by the three presidents to reveal the extent of language manipulation and ideologies in the context war. The study revealed the power of language in political speeches in three different narratives of the war. The findings of this study indicate that word choice, grammatical structures, and rhetorical devices were employed to evoke public emotions, to reflect power and influence beliefs, attitudes, and ideologies. The study revealed that language manipulation is clearly evident through the use of linguistic strategies such as powerful word choices, pronouns, modals, tenses etc., as well as emotional and logical appeals in the form of rhetorical strategies. Contribution/ Originality: This study is a critical discourse analysis of how linguistic and rhetorical strategies are used in political speeches in the context of war and reflects upon the power and dominance of the conflicting parties. It analyzes political speeches at the lexical, grammatical and textual level of discourse. 1. INTRODUCTION Language is a powerful communication tool for delivering messages and manipulating people's minds. In political contexts, it plays an essential role in demonstrating the struggle f or power, revealing ideologies, and reflecting on their implications in other domains. Political actors rely on different linguistic terms, devices, and techniques in their political speeches to communicate and convince other people about their political b eliefs and ideologies (Igiri, Awa, Ogayi, & Ngwoke, 2020). Currently, the world's attention is directed toward the tension and conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Through their narratives, political leaders in this conflict seek international support on political, economic, and social levels. Russia has tried to legitimatize the attack, seeking support from Russians and Ukrainians. In his speech, Putin declared the purpose of his military operations to "demilitarise
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Dec 30, 2023
This study investigates the discourse analysis and the pragmatic functions of the expression mayy... more This study investigates the discourse analysis and the pragmatic functions of the expression mayyɪt (lit.: dead) and how students interpret it in Jordanian Spoken Arabic (JSA). It focuses on the intended meaning of using the expression mayyɪt in daily conversations among Jordanians. Data were collected from 72 undergraduate Jordanian students. The results of the study show that the connotative meaning dominates all the expressions explained in this study. None of the participants interpreted a single expression according to its lexical meaning alone. The results also reveal that the expression mayyɪt is used to serve 16 different pragmatic functions. However, the analysis shows that the expression mayyɪt is often used negatively in JSA; three functions are used positively, while the other functions of the expression are used negatively. This kind of knowledge can significantly benefit learners of JSA as a foreign language, without which learners may encounter some communication difficulties.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Oct 1, 2023
Facebook allows users to easily share their thoughts and feelings with other users. This study at... more Facebook allows users to easily share their thoughts and feelings with other users. This study attempts to investigate the linguistic behavior of Jordanian Facebookers' choice of nicknames in Arabic. In so doing, it gives a window onto the norms and values of the Jordanian culture in a way that interaction in most other kinds of situations does not. The data consist of 234 nicknames (71 males and 163 females), which were collected from 11 large Facebook groups. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 participants to obtain their views on their use of nicknames. The results showed that the preferred category of nicknames for males is "animals reference" (23.4%), whereas "celestial bodies reference" is the least frequent type used. Females preferred using nicknames under "superiority reference" (17.3%), whereas "job reference" and "famous characters' reference" are the least frequent types used. Overall, this study lends evidence to the view that gender influences linguistic choices, including nicknames. Significantly, the analysis also shows that both males and females tend to use terms that have a "pessimistic reference" more than those that carry an "optimistic reference". Besides, the analysis shows that "flora reference" is a category that was often used in female nicknames. Essentially, it enriches knowledge about the Jordanian culture as it provides information about the general mentality, ways of thinking, and emotional and evaluative attitudes towards the genuineness of the people. Such knowledge can be of great benefit to learners of Jordanian Arabic as a foreign language.
The Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2011
Journal of language teaching, linguistics and literature, Jun 27, 2023
Anxiety is understood as being worried, an emotional reaction that accompanies one's lear... more Anxiety is understood as being worried, an emotional reaction that accompanies one's learning. In the foreign language context, it may hinder the language learning experience and lead to communication apprehension. This study investigates the role of anxiety in the willingness to communicate across Jordanian EFL eighth-grade students at a private school in Amman. Direct observations and interviews were conducted across twenty students and two teachers. The analysis of data obtained from observations showed that the majority of students were reluctant to participate in English classrooms, as only an average of 10% showed their desire to participate in all the observational categories. Firstly, the interview data showed that anxiety affected students' willingness to communicate inside classrooms. Secondly, students' level of anxiety was found to be increased by several factors such as fear of making mistakes, fear of being criticised by other people inside the classroom, including the teacher, and fear of negative teacher evaluation. Thirdly, the results also showed that some of the reasons that led to anxiety stemmed from cultural beliefs deeply rooted in the students concerning being active participants or speaking in front of other people. Finally, the study provides some recommendations for teachers in order to create an anxiety-free learning atmosphere in classrooms to reduce students' speaking anxiety.
The Buckingham journal of language and linguistics, Sep 16, 2010
This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab lea... more This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab learners of English as a foreign language to determine the types of pronunciation difficulties they encounter. More specifically, it investigates the types of declusterization processes found in their interlanguage and the sources of such processes. The results of this study demonstrate that Arab learners of English unintentionally insert an anaptyctic vowel in the onset as well as in the coda of certain English syllables. Results also show that the major reason for declusterization processes is the mother tongue influence. In order to overcome such difficulties, this paper suggests a new approach for teaching and learning L2 syllable structure system.
The Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2009
This study aims at investigating and analyzing three aspects of hedging in spoken political disco... more This study aims at investigating and analyzing three aspects of hedging in spoken political discourse: (1) means of expression, (2) density of lexical and syntactic markers, and (3) pragmatic functions. The corpus providing the database for the study consists of seventeen randomly selected televised interviews with a number of Arab politicians and leaders during the third Gulf War, the Desert Fox. The questions and comments in all the interviews were centered on the interviewees' positions from the war and the proposed solutions. A body of 13, 168 words was selected for a detailed analysis. For contrastive goals, the first 6573 words were selected from interviews in which Arabic was the medium of communication. The other 6595 words, on the other hand, were selected from interviews in which English was the medium of communication. Findings have shown that: (i) avoidance is the most commonly occurring strategy of hedging that characterizes spoken political discourse, (ii) conversational and discourse strategies including Grice's maxim's are rarely adhered to in spoken political discourse, and (iii) hedging is directly and widely affected by the recipient design.
ABSTRACT The major portion of this paper is devoted to the gender and number assignment of Englis... more ABSTRACT The major portion of this paper is devoted to the gender and number assignment of English loanwords in Jordanian Arabic. It focuses on the different gender and number markers used to mark English loanwords in Jordanian Arabic. This study also sheds light on the factors responsible for the categorization of loanwords into masculine or feminine and into singular, dual or plural. It concludes that English words undergo changes when used as loanwords in this particular variety of Arabic in order not to violate the phonological and morphological systems of the native language, Jordanian Arabic. Thus, all processes of feminization, since the masculine is unmarked, and those of duality and pluralisation are not foreign ones, but the native language here plays the role of the governor. Thus, English language number system is abandoned as there is no single example of English plural marker found in the data available at least. Thus, English loanwords in Jordanian Arabic can be considered as borrowed items rather than codeswitches as they follow the Arabic language system rather than the English language system.
The European Journal of Humour Research
People in Jordan have suffered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Jordanian government too... more People in Jordan have suffered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Jordanian government took some pre-emptive measures to curb the spread of the virus, including the announcement of indefinite curfew and nationwide strict lockdown. Humorous texts appear to be the people’s key to escape from life stress, minimise the pressure of unpleasant situations and increase pleasure. Jordanian humour attracts our attention to find out what it does during the Covid-19 pandemic and investigate its structure. To pursue this aim, a sample of 50 jokes and memes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp in 2020 and analysed using the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). The researchers conducted a systematic and detailed analysis of the data relying on the six knowledge resources postulated by the GTVH, which are script opposition, logical mechanism, situation, target, narrative strategy and language. The analysis showed that humour can be viewed as a tool to release the tensions caused by C...
People in Jordan have suffered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Jordanian government too... more People in Jordan have suffered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Jordanian government took some pre-emptive measures to curb the spread of the virus, including the announcement of indefinite curfew and nationwide strict lockdown. Humorous texts appear to be the people's key to escape from life stress, minimise the pressure of unpleasant situations and increase pleasure. Jordanian humour attracts our attention to find out what it does during the Covid-19 pandemic and investigate its structure. To pursue this aim, a sample of 50 jokes and memes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp in 2020 and analysed using the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). The researchers conducted a systematic and detailed analysis of the data relying on the six knowledge resources postulated by the GTVH, which are script opposition, logical mechanism, situation, target, narrative strategy and language. The analysis showed that humour can be viewed as a tool to release the tensions caused by Covid-19 restrictions on mobility and lockdown. It also revealed the people's comments on different aspects of their life during the pandemic, including but not limited to social contact, economic status and education. In most of the analysed texts, humour is playful and serves the function of decommitment. This study offers insights into Arabic humour discourse, showing how jokes may serve the emerging context and encourage conducting studies on humorous texts in various settings to show what roles they would play.
Shop signs are essential because potential customers see signs before they use the service that a... more Shop signs are essential because potential customers see signs before they use the service that a business offers. This study investigates how the promotion of goods or services is lexicalized in commercial café signs in the trendy Jordanian society. It investigates the linguistic material of café signs in a sample of 142 café sign boards in Irbid-Jordan. The signs were photographed and 20 cafés' owners were interviewed to better understand the factors that affect their use of café signs. The study employed the qualitative approach to analyse the observation and interview data. The results revealed that the café signage was largely dominated by the English language due to its vitality, globalization, economic motivations, and the customers' positive attitudes toward English. The study also revealed the lexicalization of trendy café names, lexical modernization, foreign cultural and pragmatic referents, such as superiority, religious, emotional, ethical, physical strength, color, historical, floral, celebrity reference which aim to heighten prominence. Different linguistic strategies including politeness strategy, personification, and metaphor were found in the signs to attract customers. The study would contribute to a better understanding of the use of English in lingua franca contexts in Jordan, and utilizing these commercial signs as a realistic source of learning linguistic strategies and pragmatics. Contribution/ Originality: Due to the scarce studies of café signs in Jordan, the current study analyses the use of different languages in the linguistic landscape which offers specifics about written communication between language users. The study contributes to a better understanding of the use of English in lingua franca contexts in Jordan.
Facebook allows users to easily share their thoughts and feelings with other users. This study at... more Facebook allows users to easily share their thoughts and feelings with other users. This study attempts to investigate the linguistic behavior of Jordanian Facebookers' choice of nicknames in Arabic. In so doing, it gives a window onto the norms and values of the Jordanian culture in a way that interaction in most other kinds of situations does not. The data consist of 234 nicknames (71 males and 163 females), which were collected from 11 large Facebook groups. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 participants to obtain their views on their use of nicknames. The results showed that the preferred category of nicknames for males is "animals reference" (23.4%), whereas "celestial bodies reference" is the least frequent type used. Females preferred using nicknames under "superiority reference" (17.3%), whereas "job reference" and "famous characters' reference" are the least frequent types used. Overall, this study lends evidence to the view that gender influences linguistic choices, including nicknames. Significantly, the analysis also shows that both males and females tend to use terms that have a "pessimistic reference" more than those that carry an "optimistic reference". Besides, the analysis shows that "flora reference" is a category that was often used in female nicknames. Essentially, it enriches knowledge about the Jordanian culture as it provides information about the general mentality, ways of thinking, and emotional and evaluative attitudes towards the genuineness of the people. Such knowledge can be of great benefit to learners of Jordanian Arabic as a foreign language.
Anxiety is understood as being worried, an emotional reaction that accompanies one's learning. In... more Anxiety is understood as being worried, an emotional reaction that accompanies one's learning. In the foreign language context, it may hinder the language learning experience and lead to communication apprehension. This study investigates the role of anxiety in the willingness to communicate across Jordanian EFL eighth-grade students at a private school in Amman. Direct observations and interviews were conducted across twenty students and two teachers. The analysis of data obtained from observations showed that the majority of students were reluctant to participate in English classrooms, as only an average of 10% showed their desire to participate in all the observational categories. Firstly, the interview data showed that anxiety affected students' willingness to communicate inside classrooms. Secondly, students' level of anxiety was found to be increased by several factors such as fear of making mistakes, fear of being criticised by other people inside the classroom, including the teacher, and fear of negative teacher evaluation. Thirdly, the results also showed that some of the reasons that led to anxiety stemmed from cultural beliefs deeply rooted in the students concerning being active participants or speaking in front of other people. Finally, the study provides some recommendations for teachers in order to create an anxiety-free learning atmosphere in classrooms to reduce students' speaking anxiety.
International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Shop signs are essential because potential customers see signs before they use the service that a... more Shop signs are essential because potential customers see signs before they use the service that a business offers. This study investigates how the promotion of goods or services is lexicalized in commercial café signs in the trendy Jordanian society. It investigates the linguistic material of café signs in a sample of 142 café sign boards in Irbid-Jordan. The signs were photographed and 20 cafés’ owners were interviewed to better understand the factors that affect their use of café signs. The study employed the qualitative approach to analyse the observation and interview data. The results revealed that the café signage was largely dominated by the English language due to its vitality, globalization, economic motivations, and the customers’ positive attitudes toward English. The study also revealed the lexicalization of trendy café names, lexical modernization, foreign cultural and pragmatic referents, such as superiority, religious, emotional, ethical, physical strength, color, his...
This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab lea... more This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab learners of English as a foreign language to determine the types of pronunciation difficulties they encounter. More specifically, it investigates the types of declusterization processes found in their interlanguage and the sources of such processes. The results of this study demonstrate that Arab learners of English unintentionally insert an anaptyctic vowel in the onset as well as in the coda of certain English syllables. Results also show that the major reason for declusterization processes is the mother tongue influence. In order to overcome such difficulties, this paper suggests a new approach for teaching and learning L2 syllable structure system.
This paper aims to identify errors committed by Arab learners of English as a foreign language in... more This paper aims to identify errors committed by Arab learners of English as a foreign language in the area of inflectional morphology. Errors are classified according to their type in comparison with what seems to be correct in the target language. In order to pinpoint the areas of difficulty and find what makes these areas difficult, the researcher classified errors with reference to their sources into intralingual, interlingual, ambiguous and other errors. The paper also aims at finding possible solutions for the difficulties learners encounter when learning a foreign language in general and English language in particular in a way that would help teachers overcome such difficulties when teaching English to Arab students. It concludes that learners‟ mother tongue plays a minor role as the interlingual errors constitute less than 25 % of the total number of learner errors; whereas, other factors such as overgeneralization and learning strategies play a major role in learning a forei...
The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2010
This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab lea... more This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab learners of English as a foreign language to determine the types of pronunciation difficulties they encounter. More specifically, it investigates the types of declusterization processes found in their interlanguage and the sources of such processes. The results of this study demonstrate that Arab learners of English unintentionally insert an anaptyctic vowel in the onset as well as in the coda of certain English syllables. Results also show that the major reason for declusterization processes is the mother tongue influence. In order to overcome such difficulties, this paper suggests a new approach for teaching and learning L2 syllable structure system.
The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics
This paper aims to identify errors committed by Arab learners of English as a foreign language in... more This paper aims to identify errors committed by Arab learners of English as a foreign language in the area of inflectional morphology. Errors are classified according to their type in comparison with what seems to be correct in the target language. In order to pinpoint the areas of difficulty and find what makes these areas difficult, the researcher classified errors with reference to their sources into intralingual, interlingual, ambiguous and other errors. The paper also aims at finding possible solutions for the difficulties learners encounter when learning a foreign language in general and English language in particular in a way that would help teachers overcome such difficulties when teaching English to Arab students. It concludes that learners’ mother tongue plays a minor role as the interlingual errors constitute less than 25% of the total number of learner errors; whereas, other factors such as overgeneralization and learning strategies play a major role in learning a foreig...
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Papers by Dr Emad M Al-Saidat