The Connotations of Pet Expressions in Jordanian Spoken Arabic

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to examine the connotation of pet expressions when used to describe people in Jordanian Spoken Arabic (JSA), that is, the wide array of negative and positive associations that pet expressions bring with them. When defining animals,al-mu‘jamal-wasi:tt and al-mu‘jamal-jami‘ define most of the animal expressions along with their connotations. The present study investigates the connotations of pets in Jordanian Spoken Arabic. To this end, the researchers distributed an open ended questionnaire to the subjects that could provide rich qualitative data. This, in turn, will give the researchers an opportunity to gain insight in the subjects’ opinions on the connotation of pets in JSA. The questionnaire consisted of (11) Jordanian spoken Arabic sentences. Each sentence included a pet expression which is used in JSA. After collecting the questionnaire the researchers tested the connotations of pet expressions in JSA against the connotation of pet expression in al-mu‘jamal-wasi:tt and al-mu‘jam al-jami‘ .The findings of the study suggest that in some cases the connotation changed from positive in the two lexicons to negative in JSA or vice versa. In others, the connotation remained the same but changed from a connotation to another.