The overall purpose of this study is to correlate features of compliments and compliment responses in Jordanian Arabic with social variables including gender, age, and traditionalism. This research project sets out to investigate the following questions:1. Do men and women give and respond to compliments differently? If so, how?2. Do people of different age groups give and respond to compliments differently? Ifso, how?3. Do traditional and non-traditional people give and respond to compliments differently? If so, how?Naturally occurring examples of compliments/ compliment responses were gathered by 10 fieldworkers in the research site of Irbid, Jordan. The dependent variables that were investigated include the topics, syntactic patterns, positive semantic carriers, the format of compliments, and the types of compliment responses.The results indicate that although the complimenting behavior of Jordanian people is similar in some ways, the social variables do correlate with some systematic differences. Specifically, people who share the same gender, age, or level of traditionalism compliment each other more frequently than persons who differ in any of these categories. Moreover, females and young people primarily use the following complimenting categories: compliments on appearance, explicit compliments, exclamatory syntactic patterns, and compliment plus explanation. Women and men differ in using compliment responses in that the women prefer questions and accounts compared to the men who employ more blessings and disagreements. Explanations forthese variations are discussed, based on the functions of compliments and the nature of the Jordanian culture.This research contributes to socio-pragmatics by analyzing variation in the use of complimenting in a relatively homogenous speech community. It tackles some culture-specific features of politeness and indirectness that are crucial to any politeness theory. The research also serves pedagogical purposes in that the application of its results in the classroom will help to reduce the communication breakdowns often experienced by L2 learners. With respect to methodology, the study provides adequate data to further test the validity of natural data collection in the investigation of speech acts. / Department of English

This thesis considers the importance of livestock in the household economy of the Ahl al Jebel Bedouin in the arid Badia region of north east Jordan. The principal objective of the study is to provide development planners working within the Badia region with information on how livestock are used and valued within a pastoral society and indicate ways in which these values may be subject to change. The study demonstrates that Bedouin herdowners have responded purposefully to developing regional markets for livestock products and have identified the income and capital growth values of livestock investments. However, the study further suggests that in important ways production for market supply is closely bound with the management of household resources, notably production for domestic consumption and the two spheres of production constitute complimentary aspects of the pastoral livelihood strategy. It is further argued that pastoral production in the Badia is mediated by the prevailing Bedouin value system which ascribes non-material values to livestock, thus giving social meaning to the way in Which herd owners choose to manage their herds. The thesis argues that the relationship between herd owners and their livestock must necessarily be flexible and suggests that changes in the way in which livestock are valued may constitute an important element in how households respond to change. The study thus characterises the Ahl al Jebel herd management objectives as innovative and fluid, and indicates that approaches to pastoral development need to be more sensitive to household objectives and more supportive of indigenous innovation.

No description available.

Correlations between societal development and climate changes have been investigated for a long period of time. At the archaeological site of Beidha, southern Jordan, most studies have focussed on the Late Pleistocene/Holocene, however, the importance of the Beidha region may even reach further back in time. The presence of water in a generally very dry landscape would have been crucial to early modern humans en route from Africa to all other continents. Through sedimentological observations and OSL dating, this study aims to contribute to solving the puzzle of the local landscape development at Beidha during a longer time scale. It is suggested that a long period of calm floodplain conditions took place, approximately during periods of high lake levels in Lake Lisan ~70-21 ka. After that, a period of soil development has been identified between two phases of aeolian deposition. More recently, during the Holocene, phases of mass flow events may have affected the area.

This study is a comparative analysis of the survival strategies of two regimes: Jordan's King Hussein and Lebanon's Fu'ad Shihab. It is an exploration of the domestic determinants of foreign policy behaviour, and the relation between foreign policy behaviour and regime consolidation, legitimation, and survival in small, weak state actors located in a permeable regional system. The study advances an hypothesis of four explanatory variables to explain the success and failure of Hussein and Shihab's respective strategies. Husseinism's 'success'--as opposed to Shihabism's 'failure'--may be explained by a successful insulatory regional policy, the historical process of state formation, the availability of economic resources under state control, and the ability of the state to use its coercive resources without hindrance. This enabled the Hashemite regime to restructure state-society relations to consolidate social control, mitigate the effects of trans-national ideologies on the domestic arena, and achieve an acceptable level of national integration among the different segments of the society gaining the state allegiance from a sizeable number, or from strategic sectors, of the population.

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Education. / This thesis explores the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) within the educational system of Jordan. Educational systems worldwide are vigorously pursuing the integration of ICT as a means of staying abreast of the rapid technological changes associated with the knowledge-based economy, and the Jordanian education system is no exception, leading it to introduce several national initiatives in recent years. There has been considerable research undertaken into the impact of ICT upon society and upon educational systems, but such studies have been generally confined to Western contexts. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including Jordan, the little research which exists has been conducted for the most part by Western experts or international organisations. Moreover, in spite of massive spending on education by governments of the MENA region, there have been warnings of a serious and widening gap between current schooling outcomes and the skills required for effective participation in globalised workplaces. Therefore, the Jordanian education system has implemented two national projects, Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy (ERfKE), and the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI), which aim to equip the system and students with skills and knowledge to participate effectively in the new era. In examining the ways in which ICT integration has been planned and implemented in Jordan, the study investigated the roles of all three levels of the Jordanian education system: the central Ministry of Education, the regional directorates, and schools themselves. Research data were gathered using a mixed method approach, which combined the use of questionnaires and case studies. The study was conducted in two phases: in Phase1, two standard questionnaires were distributed to 120 teachers and 12 principals from the three regions of Jordan: North, Central, and South. Phase2 comprised two case studies involving two schools which were found to have optimal conditions for ICT integration compared with other schools in Jordan. The investigation in Phase2 included interviews, observations, site visits, and document analysis. The study identifies and explores three issues which are fundamental to the integration of ICT in the Jordanian education system. These are first, the geo-political location of Jordan in the Middle East, and the impact that turbulence in the region has upon education systems; second, the economic constraints experienced by Jordan as a developing country, which necessitate collaboration with private sector and international parties, and third, the internal and external complexity of factors which surround ICT integration initiatives.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves: [54]-58)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-125). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-104).

Thesis (M.A.)--Southern California College, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-151).