Writing Levantine Colloquial on Facebook

My readers know that Arabic diglossia and the spoken Arabic dialects are a persistent interest of this blog, so here's a post that has nothing to do with Egypt's politics (or the death thereof), Iranian nukes, or whether Syria is in civil war: a paper on "Facebook Written Levantine Vernacular Languages."

It's in the first issue of a new e-journal called Levantine Review, It deals with the ways Facebook posters using Roman script write Levantine colloquial Arabic online, creating what the author describes as "electronic amiyya" using Latin script. The author describes herself thus:

Dua’a Abu Elhij’a is a Fulbright Scholar and Ph.D candidate in the department of linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington. She holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Haifa, Israel, and her article is based upon her M.A. research and thesis.

This article isn't for everyone but it happens to interest me, and hey, it's my blog. The link above will allow you to read the paper online, or you can download the PDF here.