A Discoursal Study of Intersentensial and Intrasentential Code-Switching in Iraqi Arabic Online Chat

The current research concerns intersentensial and intrasentential code-switching as performed by Iraqi speakers who use Iraqi Arabic and English languages simultaneously as a means of communication in their interaction in online chat namely, Facebook messenger chat. The data were collected from a group of friends, acquaintances and relatives who have different educational backgrounds. These people were grouped according to the same- and cross- sex types of interaction. Some research questions are sought as to whether these types of code- switching are frequent in Facebook messenger chat, whether they are used consciously or unconsciously and the reasons behind using them. Certain hypotheses are raised such as intersentensial and intrasentential code-switching are frequent, they are both consciously and unconsciously performed by speakers, they express different ideas and attitudes, and finally, intersentensial code-switching is more frequently adopted by females. Various results were obtained where all confirmed the hypotheses raised in the research under investigation.