Gender Differences in SMS Code-Switching by Lebanese Undergraduates

Identifier:  TDX:2761

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2761

Authors:  Bassam, Loubna

Abstract:
This study investigates gender differences in code-switching between Arabic and English in the SMS messages of Lebanese undergraduates from different universities, social classes and religions. A corpus of 1680 SMS messages was collected from 58 undergraduates: 34 women and 24 men; there were 1013 messages from women and 667 from men. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted; a questionnaire and an interview were administered. The results indicate that code-switching is used extensively in these SMS messages and that gender differences are interwoven with a set of sociolinguistic variables. There are significant gender distinctions with regard to the social class and religion of the sender, the age of the recipient, and the intra- or inter-gender nature of the communication. In addition, gender differences interact with the frequency of switches, the percentage of different languages in the messages with code-switching, and the percentage of languages used in the messages that have no code-switching. In all of these respects, women are more active than men. Not only do women code-switch significantly more in different settings, but also the percentage of code-switching tends to be higher whenever women are involved, either as senders or as receivers. The study also shows that women are innovators in the sense that they are more frequent users of new linguistic variables and are more creative in the way they use language to produce certain linguistic effects.