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Off-record indirectness in Jordanian Arabic

  • Bilal A. Al-Adaileh

    Bilal A. Al-Adaileh is an Associate Professor of English linguistics at the Department of English Language and Literature, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Linguistics and Phonetics at Leeds University in England in 2007 and his M.A. in Linguistics from the same university in 2004. He has published articles on pragmatics and linguistic politeness.

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 7. Dezember 2023

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore the realisation and motives of off-record indirectness as a common mode of conversation in naturally occurring social interactions in Jordanian Arabic. It is found that off-record indirectness mirrors speaker’s considerateness of the face wants of the speech act recipient, communicating face-threatening acts indirectly. The need to be polite justifies conversation partners’ deliberate flouting of Grice’s maxims and using conversational implicatures. Indirect means of communication and the employment of abbreviated conversations are also used for humour and as a preferred style and solidarity marker among family members, intimates and closely related people. It is also found that there are instances of off-record indirectness that might be perceived as impolite. In support of other scholars’ arguments, the study stresses that instances of off-record indirectness which might be perceived as impolite in terms of first-order politeness are doing interactional facework in terms of second-order politeness. Indirectness, then, may always be face work but is not always politeness.


Corresponding author: Bilal A. Al-Adaileh, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Maan, Jordan, E-mail:

About the author

Bilal A. Al-Adaileh

Bilal A. Al-Adaileh is an Associate Professor of English linguistics at the Department of English Language and Literature, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Linguistics and Phonetics at Leeds University in England in 2007 and his M.A. in Linguistics from the same university in 2004. He has published articles on pragmatics and linguistic politeness.

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Received: 2022-10-23
Accepted: 2023-09-26
Published Online: 2023-12-07
Published in Print: 2024-07-26

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 21.1.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/pr-2022-0047/pdf
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