Digital diglossia: Arabic between X and Facebook
Fahad Al Hussen, Mohammed Q. Shormani
Abstract
This study highlights the distribution of Standard Arabic (SA; H(igh) variety) and Colloquial Arabic (CA; L(ow) variety) across X and Facebook. 16754 public posts were collected via Python, with 10000 retained as the net dataset. Posts were classified into 7 discourse categories: *politics, technology, science, business, culture, fun,* and *sports*. Bivariate analyses, including Chi-square tests and Cramer's V (CV), examined associations among platform, discourse category, and diglossic choice, while binary logistic regression with Platform x Discourse Category interactions tested whether these associations varied across platforms. Findings reveal that there are significant associations between discourse category and diglossic choice on X, chi-square(6, *N* = 5000) = 600.35, p < .001, CV = .347, and Facebook, chi-square(6, N = 5000) = 1249.52, p < .001, CV = .500. Across platforms, platform was also associated with diglossic choice, chi-square(1, N = 10000) = 262.16, p < .001, CV = .162. Binary logistic regression further shows higher odds of SA use on X than Facebook in the political reference category (*OR* = 1.31, p = .0028), with significant platform-by-domain interactions for Culture (OR = 2.65), Fun (*OR* = 6.34), Sports (*OR* = 26.71), Science (OR = 0.41), and Technology (OR = 0.71). The study concludes that the diglossic use of SA and CA contributes to the growing body of research on digital discourse, unveiling that the digital age reshapes but does not erode diglossic boundaries, giving rise instead to a reconfigured digital diglossia.