A Socio-Pragmatic Study of Multifunctional Discourse Marker i:h in Iraqi Spoken Arabic

Abstract

In the current study, the objective is to investigate and describe the pragmatic roles of the discourse marker i:h in Iraqi Spoken Arabic, more specifically in the western region of the city of Fallujah. This piece of work is distinguished from others of its like in the Iraqi context due to the fact that it is the first of its kind to be carried out from a pragmatic point of view. There were twelve distinct cases that were included in the questionnaire, which had a total of one hundred questions in order to collect data. The pragmatic approach proposed by Fraser (1990) was modified for this study. This technique was chosen because it takes into account the distinction between content and pragmatic meaning. The results demonstrated that the discourse marker i:h in Iraqi Spoken Arabic is multifunctional, and it conveys at least 11 different meanings. This was determined by analyzing the context in which it is used. Some of the participants recommended the addition of additional functions. At the level of both the age variable and the gender variable, there was not a substantial enough difference between the two groups to be considered significant.