Digital Communication across Culture: A Case Study of the Linguistic Features of WhatsApp Communication and Applied Linguistics

Abstract

The central aim of this study is to measure the level of linguistics in the appliedWhatsApp communication among people including their social and academiclife as the number of people using digital communication including theWhatsApp has remarkably increased worldwide. To ensure reliable data andresults, we collected our data randomly from the society of the North ofJordan, definitely from Jordan University of Science and Technology (hereafterJUST) and the area surrounding the campus (Irbid area). Samples were bothmales and females B.A., B.Sc. and M.A. students (200 respondents forquestionnaires and 10 educationalists and/or fathers for semi-structuredinterviews). Moreover, the researcher monitored Jordanian soft and hard massmedia to collect observations about people reaction towards the WhatsApp.Tabulating and filtering out the responses given in the questionnaires andinterviews revealed that the application of WhatsApp has both semioticnegative and positive effect on people depending on users and their purposes.Whereas a considerable number of people saw the WhatsApp application as asource of serious problems like semiotic human addiction, cheating in variouseducational tests, reducing physical communication and time wasting, etc.,many others found it as a very good means of digital, cheap, fast and clarifiedcommunication which can carry heavy electronic loads like video clipsand images. Our study is concluded with a number of research and practicalrecommendations.