Abstract
This study is the first to analyse WhatsApp’s semantic notifications particularly those of Jordanians. It also seeks to analyse the differences in these notifications’ language use by gender and endeavors to reveal some latent socio-cultural values affecting the way users make certain language choices in these online notifications. The study contributes to knowledge since such analysis helps to reveal unique networks of individuals communicating through Arabic and English in unique and innovative ways. It mainly assists in describing the members of the Jordanian society revealing a great deal of information about their personal status, their activities, society and problems. The discourse analysis of these notifications also describes how the language has been adjusted to online discourse. The written status notifications from 300 WhatsApp’s users were compiled and analysed based on a critical discourse analysis to form a predictive model of the users based on their language and to investigate the traces of social values in these semantic expressions and explain their connotations and functions in discourse. Results indicated that the language used in WhatsApp’s status notifications were a mixture of both standard and non-standard abbreviations, reduced endings which were ungrammatical. It was also found that the linguistic notifications-based assessments constitute a valid reflection of the status of its users and their society as a whole. They were as a revelation of personal, social, religious and political issues the users are concerned about. Differences with respect to gender were not found in structural construction of the language rather in categories indicating various themes. Results showed that females status updates are more personal, religious and social while males are concerned more about political, national and international themes.
Highlights
The evolution of computer-mediated communication (CMC), a text-based communication between human beings via internet networked computers, is considered a substantial change in human communication (Cvjecovic, 2010, Unuabonah, 2010 and Him, 2012)
The written status notifications from 300 WhatsApp’s users were compiled and analysed based on a critical discourse analysis to form a predictive model of the users based on their language and to investigate the traces of social values in these semantic expressions and explain their connotations and functions in discourse
The rapid spread of instantaneous mobile messaging applications like WhatsApp has its impact on generating special linguistic features archetypal for this type of computer mediated discourse (CMD)
Summary
The evolution of computer-mediated communication (CMC), a text-based communication between human beings via internet networked computers, is considered a substantial change in human communication (Cvjecovic, 2010, Unuabonah, 2010 and Him, 2012). WhatsApp has become one of the world’s largest social network sites (i.e. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc.) used in the world (Ahad and Lim, 2014). Since 2009, WhatsApp, a mobile instantaneous interne-based messaging application, has been used by millions of users worldwide, exchanging messages, sharing photos and making calls (Acton and Koum, 2014; Ahad, and Lim,2014). People express themselves by writing in WhatsApp’s notification status. Through these written texts, users openly share their thoughts and emotions with their friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Users openly share their thoughts and emotions with their friends, colleagues and acquaintances Language use in such social network sites can be viewed as a reliable psychologically and socially rich individual difference self-report
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