Research has shown an increasing interest in the use of address forms in numerous social domains (Afzali, 2011; Aba-Alalaa, 2015). However, to the best of my knowledge, no study has touched upon the variation in the use of address terms in Jordanian Arabic. This study explores the variation of address terms used by Jordanian university students. Data were collected via observation and interviews. By addressing the issue of heterogeneity in the use of address terms in different social settings, the study enriches the understanding of the internal variation of address term norms. The analysis of data is based on Watts’ (2005) discursive approach to politeness and Agha’s (2007) approach of indexicality. The analytic approach shows that the identified normative patterns represent university Jordanian politic behaviors, which index different social meanings and relations among youth community in relation to specific social contexts. Beside their stereotypical effect of indicating (im)politeness, they might also serve various affective functions (such as endearment/aggression) or textual functions (such as reference maintenance or situational role designation). The most frequent address terms among university students are innovative terms, titles, personal names, descriptive phrases, teknonym, religious terms, and zero terms. It also seems that there are no absolute stable patterns of address term usage among youth community speaking Jordanian Arabic. Rather, there is an infinite society-internal heterogeneity in address terms usage that arise among the same group of language users. Uncertain norms of address term usage have been attested across various social groups and sub-social groups. This could be ascribed to socio-cultural and contextual influence, the intended target of the employed address terms as well as innovativeness and playfulness which are displayed in spontaneous communications. These findings have significant implications for (im)politeness and indexicality approaches, intra- and intercultural communication, and any related future research.

References

• Aba-alalaa, Hessah (2015). Terms of address in Najdi dialect : normativity and variation. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London.
• Afzali, Katayoon. (2011). The address forms of spouses in different social strata in Iran and Its sociolinguistic. International Journal of Linguistics 3(1): 1-9.
• Agha, Asif. (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Watts, Richard. (2005). Linguistic politeness research: Quo vadis? In Richard Watts, Sachiko Ide &; Konrad Ehlich (eds.), politeness in language: Studies in its history and practice, Xi-Xlvii. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.