The Jordanian Arabic discourse marker bas: A pragmatic analysis

Abstract

The present study aims at discussing the various pragmatic functions of the Arabic discourse marker (DM) bas in Jordanian Arabic (JA). The DM bas, which literally means “enough”, has over time accumulated a variety of contextual meanings, and has become one of the most commonly used discourse markers in the daily interactions of JA native speakers. In order to meet the purpose of this study, a corpus of 22 dyadic conversations by native speakers of JA was compiled. 605 instances of the DM bas were extracted from the data. An eclectic analytical methodology has been adopted as a theoretical framework in the analysis of the DM bas, particularly Fraser’s (2006a) grammatical-pragmatic approach. In pragmatically marked contexts, the results revealed that the DM bas can be considered multifunctional serving twelve different functions: Denying of expectation; making a repair; indicating insufficiency of information; returning to main topic; signaling topic shift; showing a threat; mitigating a face-threatening act (FTA); indicating a completion of cognitive process; and acting as a filler marker, directive marker, expressive marker, and modifier.