Belal M. M. A. Rakhieh

This study investigates the usage of resumptive elements (REs) in the spontaneous French of Jordanian Arabic-bilingual tour guides. We suggest that the grammatical resumption system of their first language (L1), Jordanian Arabic, will considerably affect their second language (L2) French syntax, characterised as an "intrusive resumption" language where REs are mostly ungrammatical. We looked at real-life audio recordings from guided tours and found that people preferred subject REs (like ils and elle) over object REs. Subject pronouns constituted 90% of all REs used by Jordanian guides. In a similar sample of native French speakers, they represented 81%. This overproduction is seen as a direct transfer from Arabic, where resumption is an essential syntactic approach. The results suggest that REs serve as a compensatory mechanism to alleviate processing demands and surmount obstacles associated with the French gap strategy in real-time speech production. These findings clarify the connection between L1 transfer and bilingual syntax, providing insights into the adaptation of L2 learners in professional environments. The findings have importance for language teaching, demonstrating that students who speak a language similar to their own need specific education on how to employ native-like syntactic mechanisms.

Shop signs are essential because potential customers see signs before they use the service that a business offers. This study investigates how the promotion of goods or services is lexicalized in commercial café signs in the trendy Jordanian society. It investigates the linguistic material of café signs in a sample of 142 café sign boards in Irbid-Jordan. The signs were photographed and 20 cafés' owners were interviewed to better understand the factors that affect their use of café signs. The study employed the qualitative approach to analyse the observation and interview data. The results revealed that the café signage was largely dominated by the English language due to its vitality, globalization, economic motivations, and the customers' positive attitudes toward English. The study also revealed the lexicalization of trendy café names, lexical modernization, foreign cultural and pragmatic referents, such as superiority, religious, emotional, ethical, physical strength, color, historical, floral, celebrity reference which aim to heighten prominence. Different linguistic strategies including politeness strategy, personification, and metaphor were found in the signs to attract customers. The study would contribute to a better understanding of the use of English in lingua franca contexts in Jordan, and utilizing these commercial signs as a realistic source of learning linguistic strategies and pragmatics.