Abstract

One of the most interesting phenomena of using language in an administrative setting in Jordan is commonly referred to as taxtaxa ‘shooting’. That is, to use a specific version of Arabic to fight, argue against, or weaken the status of a person who is leading an administrative position or who has an administrative status. Linguistic investigation and complete understanding of this phenomenon, as far as I know, has not been studied yet.(Note 1) The present research attempts to explore the linguistic components associated with the use of language in an administrative setting. It shows that the use of language in such a setting triggers the application of specific linguistic structures that contain particular statements, expressions, terms, and idioms. It also views the use of language in an administrative setting as an art of fighting with words, as the user tends to apply taxtaxa aggressively to achieve certain objects. The paper discusses and provides evidence for the different elements of ‘shooting’ which include its definition, labels, levels, types, users, reasons, objects, times, reaction to, and effects, respectively.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.