Case Study of Language Preferences in Social Media of Tunisia

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201212.025How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Tunisia, language policy, Facebook, social media, Arabic, Tunisian dialect, Arabizi, identity crisis

Abstract

The study aims to determine language preferences of Tunisians based on chat rooms of open Facebook groups, with the prospect of extrapolating this result to the trends of language practices in Tunisia. On defining, by means of statistical analysis, the percentage of language formations in communication macro groups (selected to be diverse in subject matter and social features), the research outlines reasons of language choice based on social characteristics of the groups. The article also reveals the problem of the correlation between the language situation and the state-language policies, which were determined in Tunisia by political discourse and after the revolution of 2011 actualized in the light of identification crisis. This crisis is evolving through the opposition of the Islamists (represented by moderate Islamic movement Ennahdha) and secular modernists. The first push forward the idea of bringing the country closer to Islamic values and carrying out the entire Arabization, while the modernists are pursuing the idea of infusing Western values and freedoms, making the French language a determinant part of “Tunisianity”. Language practices appear to be far from this opposition, as most Tunisians turn in digital communications to the Tunisian dialect which is often recorded with Latin characters and numerals (“Arabizi”), leaving behind Modern Standard Arabic (that accounts for about 21% of messages) and French (7%),while English is only making its way (0,7%). Reflecting the national identity in language is viewed as the problem of defining the legal status of the Tunisian dialect, not clarified due to Arabic diglossia.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Anna Kashina
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/12/15
TI  - Case Study of Language Preferences in Social Media of Tunisia
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference Digital Age: Traditions, Modernity and Innovations (ICDATMI 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 111
EP  - 115
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201212.025
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201212.025
ID  - Kashina2020
ER  -