ALRJournal. 2021; 5(7): 128-138 | DOI: 10.14744/alrj.2021.26234

The Sociolinguistics of English Instant Messaging in Egypt: A study based on corpus analysis and questionnaire responses

Hasnaa Abdelreheem
Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching Programme, School of Arts and Humanities, St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London, United Kingdom - English Applied Linguistics Programme, Faculty of Humanities and Social sciences, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

This paper investigates the linguistic characteristics of English in the Instant Messaging (IM) discourse as one of the most common Computer-mediated Communication modes in Egypt where English is considerably used. It also aimed to explore the reasons for the preference of English to Arabic in certain contexts, types of English errors, contexts of English and Arabic use, age of users, addressees, and purposes/functions of code-switching in English-Arabic discourse. Two sources of data are involved: a corpus of 30 IM conversations by 60 interlocutors and responses to a survey by a group of 49 participants (including some of the conversation providers). Findings of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis indicated that English in Egypt is used as an interactive medium of communication among Egyptian professionals, students and younger generations in general, regardless of their English proficiency levels, in both formal and informal contexts for various purposes. Moreover, IM English used by Egyptians is generally mixed with Arabic, and this code-switching between English and the varieties of Arabic occurs in many contexts to fulfill different functions. Details of frequency of using Arabic with different types of interlocutors, and of the varieties and forms of Arabic used are provided in the discussion.

Keywords: English-Arabic code-switching, online communication in Egypt, Egyptian instant messaging, digital use of English, CMC in Egypt

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