The Impact of Culture and Gender on the Production of Online Speech Acts among Jordanian Facebook Users

Ala’Eddin Abdullah Ahmed Banikalef

doi:10.33806/ijaes2000.19.2.9

Abstract

This study of speech acts offers deep insights into the social structure and gender differences of any speech community. Most relevant research on online speech acts has shed much light on Western speech communities, neglecting the speech act behavior of Arabic speaking communities. This study aimed to examine the influence of gender differences and the Jordanian cultural norms on the use of speech acts in Facebook Status Updates (FSUs). A total of 1718 FSUs were collected over a period of 2 months. Then, they were categorized according to Searle’s speech acts taxonomy. Results showed that women made an average of 6 updates to their Facebook status, while men averaged four. In addition, the results revealed that females and males differ in their linguistic repertoires. Male participants were inclined to use more assertive speech acts, whereas females were more likely to use expressive speech acts. Islam and tribalism are factors that were found to play an important role in defining the cultural norms of the Jordanian speech community. .

Highlights

The speech act of declaration was omitted from such analysis because it was not found in the data, and it is excluded
Examples from the collected data are given to clarify how these speech act classes are constructed in the data set: 1.Expressives: An expressive speech act occurs in utterances when one expresses his or her psychological state to the hearer
Expressive speech acts are common in Facebook status updates (FSU) because Facebook users often greet audiences at the beginning of a post ― ‫زرر‬١‫ِساوُ خ‬ ‫ة‬٠‫ا حثا‬٠ ٗ‫ث‬١‫ط‬ٚ‖ (Happy and Good evening to all of you, my loved ones!) or express condolences for someone's death ‫ح‬١ٍ‫ و‬ٟ‫ ف‬ٟ‫سِلائ‬ٚ ٟٔ‫ا‬ٛ‫ع أخ‬١ّ‫إسُ ج‬ٚ ّٟ‫"تئس‬ "ٟ‫م‬٠‫صذ‬ٚ ٍٟ١ِ‫س‬ٚ ٟ‫ أخ‬ٌٝ‫ ا‬ٞ‫ِاخ أذمذَ تأحز اٌرعاس‬ٍٛ‫ا اٌّع‬١‫ج‬ٌٕٛٛ‫( ذى‬On behalf of myself, my brothers, and colleagues in the Faculty of Information Technology, I would like to express sincere condolences to our dear brother, colleague, and friend David Aliwansh)

Summary

Introduction

Banikalef (2015) defines communication as a mutual process of sending and receiving facts, ideas, opinions, or emotions by two or more people. Okunn (2002) tries to widen the definition of communication to include any process which we need to understand others and any attempt to be understood by them. Communication could be seen as a process of sharing and expressing thoughts, opinions, feelings, emotions, information, etc. Austin (1962) stated that communicative acts such as sharing information, raising questions, or expressing feelings are all falling within the scope ofspeech act‘, a long established area in pragmatics. The core assumption of Speech Act Theory (SAT) is that communication consists of performing actions

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion