A Sociolinguistic Study of Code Choice among Saudis on Twitter by Saeed Ali Al Alaslaa A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Near Eastern Studies) in The University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Professor Mohammad T. Alhawary, Chair Associate Professor Abdulkafi Albirini, Utah State University Professor Marlyse N. Baptista Professor Emeritus Raji M. Rammuny Saeed A. Al Alaslaa [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0527-2334 © Saeed A. Al Alaslaa 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENT First and foremost, all praise is to the Almighty God for His grace and blessings throughout my entire life. Second, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and deep appreciation to my dissertation committee members for their constructive feedback and the time they dedicated to reading and offering suggestions on the writing of my dissertation. In addition, I want to convey my endless thanks to my advisor, Professor Mohammad Alhawary, who has expanded my knowledge of Arabic linguistics on both levels, theoretical and applied. The Arabic theoretical linguistics classes that I have taken with him were immensely beneficial, including Arabic syntax, semantics, phonology, morphology, historical linguistics, and dialectology. From the applied linguistics perspective, I really benefited from the courses he taught me, such as Arabic second language acquisition, Arabic teaching methodology, as well as the independent classes through which my research topic and interests have evolved and thrived. I am indebted to him for his outstanding direction, guidance, support, patience, and generosity with his time and advice. I hold in the highest esteem everything he has done for me. Without him, this journey could not have been accomplished successfully. May Allah reward him well. I also wish to recognize Professor Robin Queen, who taught my sociolinguistics class in Fall 2013 in addition to my variation and social cognition class. She is a great professor and person. She is always supportive, encouraging, respectful and respectable, and inspiring. Unfortunately, as she was on sick leave this academic year (2017–2018), she could not continue serving as a dissertation committee member. Moreover, I am grateful to Professor Marlyse Baptista, who taught my language contact class and willingly joined my dissertation committee without hesitation despite her hectic schedule. It means so much to me that she is such a great professor. ii I am also deeply thankful to Dr. Abdulkafi Albirini for his guidance and support throughout this process. I greatly benefited from his work on bidialectal codeswitching. He is also very knowledgeable and responsive to reading my emails and papers. My most profound appreciation goes out to Professor Raji Rammuny, a well-known name in Arabic and applied linguistics, for his help, encouragement, and support. He read my whole dissertation with much care and patience, all the while carefully editing and correcting my work. I am extraordinarily grateful to him for his very helpful feedback, dedication, and sincerity. Additionally, I am indebted to my friends, who were available when I needed them. Particularly, I am immensely appreciative of Ali Almidhwah, Abdulaziz Alqasem, and Mohammed Alshehri for their kind support, advice, and encouragement. I also thank my classmates Katie Arraj and Caroline Robinson for proofreading some chapters of my dissertation. Next, I am obliged to my sponsor, King Abdulaziz University, for having offered me a lecturer position in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and then offering me a scholarship to pursue my higher education in the USA. Subsequently, I must thank my colleagues for their support and kind cooperation since the first day I prepared to study abroad until the last day of this journey. I would also like to sincerely recognize my family for their thoughts, supplications, and prayers, particularly my mother for her sincere prayers and her endless love. I will never forget my father, who had passed away a couple of months before I began this journey. Certainly, he would have been proud of me if he were still alive “May Allah forgive his sins and grant him Jannah”. My deepest appreciation goes out to my great wife Thamra and my children Ali, Shadin, Firas, and Danah for all their patience, sacrifice, care, support, and encouragement throughout my graduate work as well as understanding the difficulties that graduate students encounter during their studies. Thank you for constantly reassuring me that I could accomplish my goals and being with me through thick and thin. To all of you: thank you very much from the bottom of my heart! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT ................................................................................ ii LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................... viii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................ ix LIST OF IMAGES ........................................................................................ xi ABSTRACT .................................................................................................. xv CHAPTER 1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Overview ....................................................................................................................1 1.2 Objectives of the Dissertation ...................................................................................4 1.3 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 10 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation............................................................................. 10 CHAPTER 2 Literature Review......................................................................................... 11 iv 2.1 Overview .................................................................................................................. 11 2.2 Studies on Arabic Diglossia .................................................................................... 11 2.2.1 Language and prestige..................................................................................... 18 2.2.2 Mother tongue, native language, or second language..................................... 20 2.3 Studies on Code-Switching ..................................................................................... 22 2.4 CS Studies in the Arabic Context ........................................................................... 32 2.4.1 Studies of code-switching on social media and Twitter .................................. 41 2.4.2 Language use and social variables: gender and education factors ................ 48 2.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 56 CHAPTER 3 Research Methodology ................................................................................. 58 3.1 Overview .................................................................................................................. 58 3.2 Framework .............................................................................................................. 59 3.3 Participants and Data Collection ............................................................................ 62 3.4 Data Coding and Analysis....................................................................................... 70 CHAPTER 4 Findings ........................................................................................................ 74 4.1 Overview .................................................................................................................. 74 4.2 Motivations for Codeswitching to Standard Arabic .............................................. 77 v 4.2.1 To introduce formulaic expressions ................................................................ 79 4.2.2 To emphasize a point ....................................................................................... 81 4.2.3 To quote ........................................................................................................... 83 4.2.4 To shift from the comic to the serious ............................................................. 86 4.2.5 To take a pedantic stance ................................................................................ 89 4.3 Motivations for Codeswitching to the Saudi Dialect .............................................. 91 4.3.1 Specific intended meaning ............................................................................... 94 4.3.2 For joking and sarcasm ................................................................................... 96 4.3.3 To quote ..........................................................................................................100 4.3.4 To explain and exemplify ...............................................................................103 4.3.5 To introduce sayings about daily life .............................................................105 4.3.6 To scold, insult, and personally attack ...........................................................108 4.3.7 For common usage ..........................................................................................111 4.3.8 An overlapping of the functions of SA with the SD .......................................119 4.4 The Role of Gender and