Abstract

This time which is called the information time or the knowledge society, we daily encounter the invention of new types and styles of communications such as computers which become essentially present in our everyday life, and are now available at homes and in offices worldwide. Computer, with its two main shapes (desktops and laptops), has different types such as; PDAs, mobile phones, Blackberries, etc.; and different media like the internet, emails, chat, text messaging and others. We can expect that new ones will be invented. All these types and styles of communication gadgets lead to coining new terms and concepts that can potentially have different interpretations from context to context. These different types and styles of information and communication technologies impact the way people communicate and use language. They also have an impact on the way they read, write, and process information. This lead the Arab internet users like other people worldwide to use new/deviant orthographic forms of language for communication which become the bone of contention among Arab scholars. This paper studies the orthographic and linguistic colorings of instant messages (IM) used by the Saudi and Qatari students. I intend to study this form/register of language linguistically to achieve the following goals; 1) What are the stylistic coloring and orthographic features of this new Arabic forms used in IM communication. 2) The possibilities of applying IM written form on other registers for communication. 3) The controversial views of the Arab scholars about the negative and positive impacts of using this form of a language on standard Arabic.

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