The Net-lingo Abbreviations Delineated in Facebook Language Amongst The Iraqi EFL

Abstract

This pilot study is anchored on the fact that the internet has mostly been one of the sources that inspired the slang variety of language. Even back to the early 1980s, net users had their own particular argot and abbreviations. Some of these contractions eventually find their avenue into a more enduring part of the society, where they are used for years by people of all ages. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the most popular net-lingo abbreviations and contractions with specific reference to the functions conveyed socially and pragmatically through the occurrence of these cyber structures amongst Iraqi EFL students. Remarkably, the utilization of such expressions reveals the ability of Iraqi facebookers to make use of their linguistic knowledge in order to develop net-lingo abbreviations in communication. Accordingly, the researcher built a questionnaire which was conducted to elicit those abbreviations from the EFL learners' views. To assess the validity of the questionnaire results, a list of 34 abbreviations was created depending on various sources. Then, the list of those abbreviations was distributed amongst four groups of English-department students at the College of Education for Human Sciences / Diyala University. Consequently, the results were analyzed statistically and a set of conclusions was drawn