How do Jordanians express their birthday wishes on Facebook? A sociolinguistic study

This study aims to examine the speech act of congratulations in the Arabic language on the occasion of 'birthday' among young Arab Jordanians who use Facebook to share social life with each other. The data collected is 855 birthday congratulation notes posted by 100 Jordanian Facebook users. The convenience sampling is being used as research methodology through which there are four main categories emerged from the data analysis, namely, Arabic Illocutionary Force Indicating Device' (AIFID), Emotional Statements', (ES), Religious Expressions (RE), and Quotations and Poetic Verses (QPV). Findings revealed that the Jordanian linguistic behaviour and pragmatic norms were profoundly rooted in the social values and religious norms of the Jordanian online speech community. The study concludes with a discussion of important directions for future research, such as examining gender differences in expressing birthday wishes.