The use of Facebook and WhatsApp by Mu'tah University students : a linguistic study

Other Title(s)

استخدام الفيس بوك و الواتس أب من قبل طلاب جامعة مؤتة : دراسة لغوية

Dissertant

al-Dhunaybat, Marwan Muhammad

Thesis advisor

al-Sakarnah, Ahmad Khalaf

Comitee Members

al-Rashdan, Bashshar Shahir
Kanakri, Mahmud Ali
al-Sarayirah, Atif Ata Allah Id

University

Mutah University

Faculty

Faculty of Arts

Department

Department of English Language and Literature

University Country

Jordan

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2015

English Abstract

This study focuses on the communication of Mutah University students on Facebook and WhatsApp.

It investigates the differences between this communication and traditional written texts through the techniques which make these differences.

Also, it takes the internet linguistics to be its framework.

This study adopts three instruments to collect the data, the questionnaire, the survey and the observation.

The samples of the study are collected from two sites created by the researcher on Facebook and WhatsApp for Mutah University students.

The data are reviewed and analyzed.

Accordingly, it is found that the students use Facebook and WhatsApp for three purposes.

These are classified under scientific, social and entertaining purposes.

The study, also, has found many differences when comparing the written language used by Mutah University students in the Facebook and WhatsApp communication to traditional written language.

The differences are represented by seven techniques which are the focus of the study.

These techniques include Arabic-English code switching, abbreviations, leetspeak, emoticons, rebus, reduplication of letters and lexical deviations.

The reasons for these techniques are discussed, too, and it appears that they are used for economic, textual, social and scientific reasons.

This study shows that the social usage is dominant where the techniques are used, and that the code switching style of language is suitable for all purposes in Facebook and WhatsApp.

Finally, it is recommended, for other linguistic research works, to investigate the syntactic, morphological and semantic phenomena among this community.

Main Subjects

Educational Sciences
Languages & Comparative Literature
Information Technology and Computer Science

Topics

• Universities
• Students
• Social networking Web sites
• Jordan
• Computational linguistics

No. of Pages

53

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-673680