The Role of Age and Gender in the use of the Glottal Stop in Facebook pages: case study of Tlemcen and Fez Speech Communities

Abstract

Abstract: The non-standard linguistic variation in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) corpus gained ground by the development of technology. In other words, the dialect is increasingly used for communication rather than the standard language in social media. This research paper shades light on the use of Tlemcenian Arabic (TA) and Fessi Arabic (FA) (two Arabic urban dialects from Algeria and Morocco respectively) by studying among Facebook users from both genders at all age groups, more particularly the use of the Glottal Stop as a marker of urban variety which is mostly substituted by its counter [g] related to the rural one. The aim of this study is to show that the use of the glottal stop by natives of TA and FA in the virtual context manifested in the use of social networks in the same way of what we see in real life linguistic usage quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The obtained results show that in Tlemcen, the glottal stop is avoided but still used as opposite to Fez which it is scarcely used and only by old people particularly women. Keywords: Computer Mediated Communication, glottal stop, urban Vs. rural, Tlemcenian dialect, Fessi dialect.