Yaʕni as an evaluative discourse marker in Arabic oral narratives of personal experience

Abstract EN

Research has shown that discourse markers can signpost discourse-pragmatic functions related particularly to oral narratives.

This paper has two main aims: 1) to highlight the evaluative discourse pragmatic role of Arabic yaʕni (literally, it means) in a sample of Arabic oral narratives of personal experience; and 2) to seek interpretations for the recurrent use of yaʕni in Arabic oral narratives of personal experience, in general, and the evaluation segment, in particular.

A sample of four Arabic audio-recorded oral narratives of personal experience collected from four participants served the data for the present study.

Findings suggest: 1) the frequent use of yaʕni in the evaluation segment, the orientation segment, and the complicating action segment of the Labovian components, with the majority of particular frequency of occurrence in the evaluation segment; 2) variation of yaʕni on the speaker level, the functional discourse-pragmatic level, the utterance-position level, and the evaluative elements level; 3) the multiplicity of functions of the discourse marker yaʕni.

Findings of the current study have a number of intellectual, theoretical, and practical implications related primarily to pragmatic markers and narratives of personal experience coming from Arabic perspectives.