A sociolinguistic study of mobile SMS messages : college of education as a sample

Abstract EN

The study aims at understanding and explaining the sociolinguistic dynamics of text messaging (texting or SMS) within the Kurdish context, namely the College of Education, University of Duhok.

The content of SMS messages is studied on the basis of (1) structure and (2) themes and categories.

The structure of SMS texts involves types of words, length of short messages (SM), punctuations, abbreviations and emoticons, salutations and closings.

On the other hand, themes (like coordination, information, questions, answers, orders and requests) and categories (like messages of greetings, friendship, fun, religion, romance, business, sports and occasions) are taken into consideration.

The structural and semantic characteristics of SMS messages are analyzed according to three social norms: (1) age, (2) gender and (3) degree of formality.

In the Kurdish context, SMS texting is finding its way to be a means of developing social orientation of friendship, but not family relationship