Analyzing Arabic Discourse Markers Through the Lens of Aljazeera’s Instagram Caption

Abstract

In recent decades, there has been growing interest at discourse markers (DMs) to improve the quality of writing and increase the comprehension of text. Despite the existence of many studies into Arabic DMs, little work reports the investigation of Arabic DMs diversity in accordance with the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) approach selected in social media. To plug this gap, this present study investigates Arabic DMs diversity through the lens of aljazeera Instagram caption. This qualitative study employed theory of Fraser (2005)- and Khairudin, Noor & Rohman (2020) as the main framework of the study for the data analysis process. Findings show that there are top three of elaborative DMs on Aljazeera’s captions namely wa (148), adhâfa (14), haisu (8). And lâkin, fîma, and filmaqâbil as a top three of contrastive DMs. Inferential DMs has bidzâlika, wa bidzâlika and wa bidzâlika bi sababin. Besides ba’da/wa ba’da, ‘indamâ and wa ba’damâ as a temporal DMs on Aljazeera. Additionally, affirmative DMs as a new category also found in this study. Out of a total of 90 captions, Aljazeera used more elaborate DMs with 69,3 % than other categories. The major reason for the high frequency of EDMs is the high frequency of DMs wa.