Arabic and Latin keyboard Choice in Lebanese Students’ Discussions on WhatsApp.

Abstract

Written discourse in WhatsApp discussions has been addressed in several articles in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). The aim of this study is to determine Lebanese universities students’ choice between Arabic and Latin keyboards while typing their online messages in WhatsApp groups and try to determine variables that affect their keyboards’ choices. We joined 33 WhatsApp discussion groups from 7 major Lebanese universities and gathered 227,059 messages written by 1,112 multilingual students. The results showed that even though Arabic keyboard is not very popular amongst some Lebanese universities’ students, it is still present in WhatsApp groups’ discussions of students especially at some faculties of the official Lebanese University where courses are taught in Arabic language. The results showed also that Arabic is widely typed in Arabizi using a Latin keyboard. This seems to be the case in the majority of universities that took part in the study. In addition, students at universities with high tuition fees and those who are having their curriculum in foreign languages use Latin keyboard more than students at some faculties of the public university.