This study delves into the use of impoliteness strategies within emails sent by undergraduate and postgraduate students to their professors, aiming to discern the variance in their implementation based on (Culpeper and Hardaker’s. 2017. Impoliteness. In: Culpeper, Jonathan, Haugh, Michael and Daniel Kadar (eds.), The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im) politeness, 199–225. Basingstoke: Palgrave) model. Data, comprising emails from University of Jordan students and semi-structured interviews, underwent analysis to identify impoliteness strategies and themes. Findings indicate a higher prevalence of impolite (...) strategies among undergraduates, totaling 58 instances compared to 38 among postgraduates. Particularly, undergraduates exhibit a greater tendency toward positive impoliteness. Thematic analysis of interviews unveils three contributing factors: work experience, participation in writing skills courses, and familiarity with formality levels. Notably, undergraduates’ lack of work experience contrasts with postgraduates’, often impacting their email etiquette. Moreover, postgraduates’ extensive enrollment in writing courses during MA studies fosters a more formal approach in communication with professors. The study underscores implications for future research, emphasizing the need to explore these dynamics further. By comprehending the influences on students’ email behavior, institutions can devise tailored interventions to promote effective and respectful communication within academic setting. (shrink)

Lying is the deliberate act of conveying false information to deceive others using language. Examining the linguistic and content features of this act has been a point of interest for forensic linguists due to its potential significance in examining various legal contexts such as criminal investigations, accusations, eyewitness testimonies, allegations, and police interrogations. This article aimed to examine the content features of lying in Jordanian Colloquial Arabic and their social constraints. The study draws on the Reality Monitoring (RM) approach, a (...) forensic tool that has proven its effectiveness in lying detection. To achieve this aim, a corpus of 288 narratives, 144 lying and 144 truthful, was collected through face-to-face interviews with 48 speakers stratified by gender, age, and educational attainment. The findings of this study did not conform to the RM criteria. The study revealed that truthful accounts contain more cognitive details while lying accounts contain more spatial, temporal, affective, and perceptual details. (shrink)

This study examines the visual [monomodal] and multimodal metaphorical representations of Jordanians’ perceptions and attitudes toward the amended Cyber Crime Law in Jordan as depicted by Jordanian activists and image creators online. It adopts Forceville’s theory of Multimodal Metaphor [ 1, 2 ] as its theoretical framework. Twenty visual and multimodal depictions were collected from online platforms and were analysed to identify metaphorical representations. The results reveal a higher frequency of use of multimodal metaphors over monomodal ones, which can potentially (...) be attributed to the former employing both visual and verbal cues; thus, improving message clarity and comprehensibility. The analysis depicts a predominantly negative image of Jordanian perceptions and attitudes, portraying the law as a silencer, barbed wires, and handcuffs which demonstrates its perceived restriction of Jordanians’ freedom of speech in digital space and their online activities. Jordanians were also visually depicted as potential criminals, suggesting that ordinary citizens are potentially viewed as suspects or criminals under the new Cyber Crime Law. The study highlights the influential role of visual representations in shaping public opinions and perceptions of laws. (shrink)