The (Socio)Pragmatic and Syntactic Analysis of Discourse Markers in Twitter Communications Among Najdi Arabic Speakers

This dissertation thoroughly explores two of the most common Najdi Arabic discourse markers among Twitter Najdi Arabic users, namely elzibda ‘lit. the gist’ and min jid ‘lit. for real.’ Qualitatively, the dissertation scrutinizes the various pragmatic, textual, interpersonal, and cognitive functions of NA (Najdi Arabic) discourse markers and the sociolinguistic factors that appear to have an effect on the use of NA discourse markers. Quantitively, the dissertation examines the syntactic positions NA discourse markers occupy, the items NA discourse markers collocate with across various contexts, as well as the frequency of occurrence of NA discourse markers. The results show that NA discourse markers have numerous pragmatic functions, including textual, interpersonal, and cognitive. The NA discourse marker elzibda is more productive than min jid since it shows almost double the number of pragmatic functions. The NA discourse markers share a number of textual and interpersonal functions. Nevertheless, the NA discourse marker elzibda only exhibits cognitive functions. Interestingly, the NA discourse marker elzibda shows more textual functions than min jid whereas min jid shows more interpersonal functions than elzibda. The NA discourse markers collocate with various syntactic categories across different positions. Syntactically, the NA discourse marker elzibda and min jid occur predominately in the initial position. Nevertheless, the NA discourse marker elzibda and min jid occupy medial, final, and alone positions. The NA discourse marker min jid considers the alone position as one of the landing sites while this position is quite rare for elzibda. Sociolinguistically, the use of the NA discourse marker elzibda and min jid is highly associated with NA Twitter users with a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) Degree. Female and male NA Twitter users employ the NA discourse markers elzibda and min jid in varying degrees of frequencies. For instance, female NA Twitter users employ the NA discourse marker min jid almost twice the times of male NA Twitter users. Female and male NA Twitter users also show different pragmatic functions in certain instances. For instance, female NA Twitter users employ the NA discourse marker elzibda for realization while male NA Twitter users employ elzibda as a clarification device.