The Semantic and Pragmatic Functions of /bʕdɪn/ “بعدين” in Informal Arabic

This study aims at investigating the functions of informal Arabic discourse marker “بعدين” /bʕdɪn/. By figuring out these and highlighting common used ones, this paper tries to help communicators be aware those in their communication avoid any possibility misunderstanding. “Twitter” was main tool collecting data study. social medium provided natural contexts that significantly assisted analysis The dataset consisted one hundred five tweets containing Those reflected texts written by native speakers from different nationalities. guided relevance theory methodology related literature. findings showed /bʕdɪn/ has semantic meanings similar English adverbs “then” “later.” It semantically as a temporal adverb putting actions sequence or delaying move unspecified time future. also coherence supporting value communicative situations. In respect based on collected data, seven pragmatic were elicited for were: orientation shift, result, conditional marker, disagreement, coordination meaning “but,” agreement reason.