Quotations in Jordanian Parliamentary Discourse: A Pragma-Discourse Perspective

InformedPragma-discourse by an eclectic framework of pragmatics, discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics, this chapter examines the deployment of quotations as a discourse-pragmatic strategy in Jordanian parliamentary discourse vis-à-vis formats, sources, quotativesQuotatives, and functions. The study points out that the use of quotation seems to be a natural and common part, as well as a strategic feature, of Jordanian parliamentary discourseParliamentary debatediscourse. The findings show that Jordanian members of parliamentJordanmembers of parliament utilize diverse forms of quotation (direct, indirect, mixed, scare, and self-quotationsSelf-quotation) from different sources (definite, indefinite, and unnamed). They also show that they are inclined to make use of a relatively limited number of quotativesQuotatives, mainly, neutral quotatives (the verbs qāla and dhakara). Regarding the functions of quotations, the pragmatic-discourse analysis of the present corpus shows them serving as a powerful and strategic means for conveying an array of functions according to the quoter’s intention (e.g., evidential, adversarial, ironyIrony and dissociation of responsibilityDissociation of responsibility).