Responding Strategies in Jordanian Arabic: A Socio-pragmatic Study

Abstract

This study aims to examine the types of response strategies employed in the interactions between Jordanians and the employees of the call-centre-customer service (CCCS) of a major tele-communications company in Jordan. It focuses on their linguistic behaviours upon responding taking into account the degree to which they adhere to Leech’s [1] maxims. Naturally-occurring interactions and designed situations were used to collect data from 28 Jordanian Arabic speakers participated in this study. The results of the study show that participants adhere to a number of the maxims in that responses are made politely whether the act is achieved or not. Furthermore, it has been revealed that participants are impacted by the social and cultural norms of the Jordanian society.