'She Has The Heart!’ Communicative Strategies of the Linguistic Expressions of Illnesses in Jordanian Arabic and the Effect of Religion in Their Manifestation

Abstract

This article explores how illnesses are linguistically expressed in Jordanian Arabic (JA). It also investigates the extent to which religion and social norms influence this expression. To this end, we collected authentic data from a number of interactions of JA speakers, particularly within interactive radio and TV programs addressing various life issues, where discussions about illness arise. A total of 834 linguistic expressions of illnesses were found and categorized according to the type of illnesses and the inflicted organ. Afterwards, we interviewed 13 participants to identify the major factors responsible for the use of the expressive strategies of illnesses in JA. Our results indicate that illnesses in JA are predominantly expressed by two distinct sets of expressive strategies: euphemistic expressive strategies (EESs) and non-euphemistic expressive strategies (NEESs). The former are used with cancer and mental health disorders and essentially include the replacement of the name of the illness with a religious expression or a conventional term. On the other hand, NEESs are used to express other illnesses (e.g., heart problems, diabetes, etc.). The effects of (folk) religious beliefs and social norms in determining the use of these expressive strategies are discussed. A number of implications for future research are highlighted.