Saif Abdulkareem Hadi Shaban

During the years of the pandemic (2020-2022), the efforts of the medical group adopted a new approach. They played an essential role in the process of fighting COVID-19. People tried to thank, encourage, and support them by using language tools. The current research presented a study in critical discourse analysis to investigate the texts that people used, whether to thank, describe, or encourage the members of the medical field during the war against COVID-19.This work aims to investigate the linguistic devices used in Facebook posts concerning vocabulary and text structure to praise the medical crews during the pandemic, deconstruct the mental models that led those people publish to publish such posts, and interpret how this digital discourse contributes to reshaping the social image of the medical crews. Furthermore, this study analyzed five discourses, posts published on the Facebook social media platform, based on levels put forward by linguists specialized in critical discourse analysis, such as Norman Fairclough and van Dijk. Finally, the current research concluded that the posts employ several metaphorical expressions, such as the knight and the army of mercy. Besides, the text structure of these discourses, was categorized by strong coherence and clear logical reasoning. The language used to praise the medical crews was not spontaneous, but rather depended on intensive linguistic tactics that transformed doctors and other medical staff from the medical lexicon into the military field. Finally, the study demonstrated that the tribute phrases used contributed to redesigning the social identity of the medical members. Doctors and other medical staff were shifted from specialized employees into heroes and social leaders.

This study investigates the concept of jargon from a socio- cognitive approach. The research seeks to decode the dimensions of localizing English medical terms, jargon, in Al- Najaf medical discourse, depending on Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive perspective. Although the fact that the language of the staff in the medical field is Arabic, they use English when they communicate about medical cases because the language of their academic study was English. The study aimed at exploring the different terms of jargon used in Al-Najaf medical community, investigating the types and functions of jargon, and identifying the hidden ideologies of the medical staff behind employing the medical jargon. It has been observed that they use terms that cannot be understood by the surrounding people. They manipulate English words in different ways to create new modified ones. The data was collected by conducting some interviews with ten members of the medical community in Al-Najaf hospitals. Finally, the research concluded that the medical staff utilizes jargon when they interact with each other about medical cases, such as the use of مشَ وِّ كْ instead of “in shock “. Their usage is restricted only to the word form of jargon. Moreover, they have hidden intentions behind using jargon, such as separating themselves from anyone who does not belong to their profession to create a closed and highly prestigious linguistic community known as “in-group”, and isolate the patient in an area that constitutes “out-group”. Besides, jargon is one of the most powerful clues that help the medical staff to achieve numerous functions concerning proficiency, time saving, reproducing language, and as a result, social dominance over other language users around them.

This paper aims to investigate the variation of English language among English students. The study sample consists of two groups. The first group consists of 105 (male and female) students, fourth-year advanced Iraqi learners studying EFL at the Department of English at three faculties (Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Languages, and Faculty of Education) at the University of Kufa for the academic year 2023/2024. This group includes (35) students selected from the faculties mentioned above. The second group is a recording of (20) fourth-year students who have a degree of fluency in English and learned English in Iraq. A statistical analysis is employed to find students' most preferred language variety. The questionnaire data were analyzed using various statistical methods, including percentages and mean. The findings revealed that the students slightly prefer British English to American English.

Power and ideology, which are two main concerns in critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, have become medium for each other to innervate and sustain each other in the society. Both of them can be manifested via the use of some linguistic expressions and forms. Halliday's Systematic functional linguistic (SFL), can be applied in the sake of investigating those linguistic forms in harmony with CDA. The current article investigates the use of deixis to represent power relations and ideologies in two messages of Abu Bakr AlBaghdadi (leader of ISIS). The analysis involves CDA based on the works of van Dijk (2000 & 2008) and Fairclough (1989, 1995& 2003) in addition to Halliday’s SFL (1985 & 1994). The conclusions manifested different power relations in Al-Baghdadi messages (Allah Almighty and Al-Baghdadi, Al-Baghdadi and Non-Muslims, and Al-Baghdadi and the Muslims). Further, ideologies of principle belief, the believers’ duty and political ideologies are all identified through the use of personal deixis such the pronoun ‘I’ and the pronoun ‘we’ refer to Al-Baghdadi (the speaker) and to ISIS (his group) respectively, the pronoun ‘Him’ and the pronoun ‘He’ represent Allah Almighty. In this context, the pronoun ‘we’ has no power over anyone, while the pronoun ‘Him’ is the powerful one