Congratulation and thank you announcements in Jordanian newspapers: Cultural and communicative functions

Abstract

This study examines congratulation and thank you announcements in Jordanian newspapers. The practice of placing personal messages of congratulations and thanks in newspapers, which is very common in Jordan, will be looked at in terms of their use by Jordanian people for the purpose of serving a number of communicative functions. The purpose of this investigation is to determine the full extent of the communication that is thereby achieved, which clearly extends well beyond the normal information‐giving function of newspaper announcements. Various aspects of these announcements — their structure, distribution, size, number, position in the newspaper, frequency, use of photographs — were examined in order to see what type of sociolinguistic information they attempt to communicate. The findings demonstrate that these announcements can be seen as real communicative events, in the sense that they attempt to communicate a wealth of information about the announcer and the addressee(s). Some announcement were also found to be used by some institutions or individuals for the purpose of selling themselves or selling the addressee(s) to the public. Moreover, the study also revealed that congratulation and thank you announcements are governed by such sociological factors as sex, socio‐economic status, and occasion, among other factors. The findings presented here bear on orientations toward the importance of studying language as a communicative device in relation to the society in which it is used and the sociocultural functions it attempts to serve.