Code Switching in Digital Communication

Abstract

This research examines Codeswitching (CS) from Hebrew into Arabic as used by Arabs from Iksal and Um Al-Fahm, in Israel, in the context of Arabic used in Digital communication (WhatsApp and Viber), specifically the written colloquial rural Palestinian Arabic dialect of Arabs in Israel. The study focuses on topics that motivate uses of code switching, the syntactic characteristics of these code switches, phonological aspects, Categories of CS. The expectations were that switches by bilinguals are largely limited to greeting phrases and are restricted to clause boundaries with one-word switching into Hebrew. Moreover, there is an adaptation of L2 to L1 phonology. The results show that the most frequent topics evolve around education and employment. Moreover, code switches can still be code switches even if they have been adapted to Arabic phonology. The results also reinforce previous findings, such as Paolillo (2011) and Lee (2007), on how synchronicity affects the usage of CS.