YOU SAY HELLO, I SAY MAR7ABA: EXPLORING
THE DIGI-SPEAK THAT POWERED THE ARAB
REVOLUTION
By
Lamiyah Bahrainwala

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Rhetoric and Writing
2011

ABSTRACT
YOU SAY HELLO, I SAY MAR7ABA: EXPLORING THE DIGI-SPEAK THAT
POWERED THE ARAB REVOLUTION
By
Lamiyah Bahrainwala
This is an exploratory study of a digital-script called 3ngleezy, which was developed
by the Arab youth in the Middle East and North Africa. This script incorporates Arabic
numerals and the English alphabet in texts composed primarily in and for digital spaces. This
study explores how such a script allows users to transcribe Arabic in these digital spaces
while retaining some of the visual and aural integrity of the Arabic script. Furthermore, in
light of the 2011 Arab revolution, this study explores the social subtext of 3ngleezy, which
appears to have the rhetorical power to create and mobilize users in digital communities into
social action.

Copyright by
LAMIYAH BAHRAINWALA
2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Bill, Malea and John, thank you for your kindness.
To my interviewees, thank you for your honesty.
Many thanks to Nauf A. and Noora A. for your friendship and scholarly support.
Abid: thanks for making the coffee.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………vi
I.

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………... 1

II.
i.
ii.
iii.

METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………..3
The Cultural-Rhetorical perspective……………………………………....6
Methodology as Trail………………………………...…………………....9
Methods…………………………………………………..........................19

i.
ii.

FINDINGS……………………………………………………………………… 22
User Attitudes and 3ngleezy………………………….............................. 22
3ngleezy’s Social Rules………………………………………………….26

III.

IV.

ANALYSIS: 3NGLEEZY’S ORAL, AURAL AND VISUAL RHETORICS…. 29

V.

THE FUTURE? ………………………………………………………………….33
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………….……………………… 38

v

LIST OF FIGURES

FIG. 1 Beginnings……………………………………………………..………………………1
FIG. 2 Translating 3ngleezy…………………………………………..………………………4
FIG. 3 The Email……………………………………………………….…………………….10
FIG. 4 The Response…………………………………………………………………………11
FIG. 5 Researcher Roles……………………………………………………………………...12
FIG. 6 Relationality…………………………………………………………………………..12
FIG. 7 A photograph of a text produced during interviews………………………………….14
FIG. 8 Unheard Narratives: a map I created while planning my methodology..…………….15
FIG. 9 Correspondence……………………………………………..………………………..15
FIG. 10 The Need for Scholarship…………………………………………………………...17
FIG. 11 The 2011 Revolution – sparked by digital media, sustained by 3ngleezy…………..18
FIG. 12 A restaurant sign in 3ngleezy………………………………………………………..24
FIG. 13 Examples of symmetrical Islamic art………………………………………………..32
FIG. 14 A Summary………………………………………………………………………….33

vi

I.

Introduction

FIG. 1: Beginnings
(For interpretation of the references to color in this and all other figures, the reader is referred
to the electronic version of this thesis).
FIG. 1 shows a text message a Syrian friend mistakenly sent me five years ago. It read
“Waaaa3333 hahaha ya ab mabrouk :D 2lek kteer tayab 3l ekher 7amdilla 3a salamtek”. It
was the first time I had seen such a script – transcribed Arabic, mingled with numbers. In this
study, I will examine this digital script, which was developed by the Arab youth of the
Middle East and North Africa. It is called 3ngleezy (pronounced [en’gle-zə]).
When I started this study a few months ago, I had no inkling that the lives of those
that use 3ngleezy was about to change dramatically. The waves of protests that swept through
North Africa and the Middle East earlier this year did not just alter the course of Middle
Eastern history; they changed world history. Two unlikely powers fuelled these protests: the
Arab youth, and digital technology. Historically criticized for their un-involvement in
politics, the youth of these nations wielded a surprising weapon to power the resistance:
digital networking .
In early January this year, 26 year old Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to
protest the Tunisian regime. The aftermath of his self-immolation was heavily censored by
the Tunisian government. However, the news quickly spread to neighbouring countries
through YouTube, galvanizing the youth of Egypt, Algeria and Libya into resistance. Saudi
Arabia and Oman experienced civil unrest, and Bahrain erupted into protests. Within digital
minutes, Facebook and Twitter were awash with updates on the resistance. On YouTube,
1

thousands watched bulldozers tear down the Pearl Roundabout, Bahrain’s symbol of
resistance. Google openly expressed its support of Wael Ghonim, who left his job at Google
to protest in Tahrir Square.
When the revolution was underway, I did not immediately pick up on the fact that
3ngleezy was the primary language being used by protestors in digital spaces. Instead, I was
focused on trying to secure research and conference funding. While doing so, I had to answer
questions about the ‘importance’ and ‘timeliness’ of my research. So I thought long and hard
about how I would ‘pitch’ it: to my committee, to readers, and especially the community I
was engaging, who believed that 3ngleezy was trivial and rhetorically deficient. At the time I
was trying to come up with this ‘pitch’, I hadn’t realized that 3ngleezy had the power to
mobilize massive social movement. But 19 days after I finished my last interview with an
3ngleezy user, the Arab revolution began. I watched as the community I was engaging
plunged into the resistance, using 3ngleezy to communicate across Arabics, using ‘social’
spaces to political ends. 3ngleezy was the digital language of the Arab youth, and the Arab
youth were powering the revolution through digital spaces. These events in world history
reaffirm why we study rhetorics that operate in digital spaces: their mechanisms, functions,
and rhetorical strengths. This study did not need a ‘pitch’.
Because it has received almost no scholarly attention so far, I realized an exploratory
study of 3ngleezy would be most productive at this point. The intention was to focus on
phenomena rather than individuals, and to identify the variables at play rather than control
them. The design of my exploratory study draws from the research model created by Lauer
and Asher in their work “Composition Research: Empirical Designs”. Such a model
recognizes that there are too many “predictor variables for the number of subjects”, and
therefore seeks to analyze data “with as little restructuring of the situation or environment
under scrutiny” (1988). In the next section, along with the origins of 3ngleezy, I will discuss
2

the principles at the basis of my research design. Because I am not an 3ngleezy user, and
therefore a community ‘outsider’, it was necessary for me to interrogate my own positionality
as a researcher before I could approach my data.

II.

Methodology
As I mentioned earlier, my study examines a language that was born in text-

messaging spaces. I observed this language in use in Sharjah and Dubai, two populous cities
in the United Arab Emirates. While it began as a text-message script-of-convenience, it soon
spread to email, Facebook, and Twitter. The script uses the English alphabet on keypads and
keyboards to create messages that contain Arabic words that also encapsulate the sounds of
Arabic. This use of numbers is not unlike the ‘purely English’ text messages that use numbers
as an economical way of representing parts of words that sound like numbers, like ‘gr8’ for
‘great’ and ‘b4’ for ‘before’.
However, this language has a completely different purpose and affect. The use of
numbers aims not to shorten the words but instead convey the sound of the Arabic alphabet.
This is because the incorporated numbers visually represent some Arabic characters. For
instance, the number 7 resembles the Arabic sound ‘haah’, represented by the sign ‫ .ح‬For
instance, the Arabic endearment ‘hayati’ is written 7ayati, which captures the deep ‘h’ sound
of the Arabic word. Therefore, these numbers both visually and aurally represent an entirely
different language even though they are flanked by English alphabet. Furthermore, even
though the entire text message many contain several English words, the words with the
numbers inserted into them are always transcribed Arabic. In my initial abstract, I called this
language ‘fused text’, but later learned that users preferred the term 3ngleezy – which is what
I have used.

3

3ngleezy users explained that the language grew out of their need to be able to
verbally converse in Arabic, their L1, while being able to write in English, which was the
medium of their education. 3ngleezy reconciles these two literacies – verbal Arabic and
written English – in digital spaces. 3ngleezy-users are spread across various countries in the
Middle East and North Africa. Since they all speak different varieties of Arabic, their use of
3ngleezy naturally reflects these dialectical differences. However, the numbers in 3ngleezy
represent Arabic characters uniformly across these regions. This is because while the spoken
Arabics vary, the Arabic characters themselves do not. Therefore, the characters and their
‘numerical translations’ are used in fairly consistent ways across 3ngleezy-using groups. I
compiled most of FIG. 2 using the table in Palfreyman and Khalil’s article “A Funky
Language for Teenzz to Use” (2006) as a guide, but it is still incomplete. As with all
communication systems, 3ngleezy is continually evolving as users add to the symbols in use.

FIG. 2: Translating 3ngleezy
4

The use of ‘8’ to represent ‫ ق‬is a more recent innovation – one that users say show
‘hipness’. Based on the presence or absence of newer innovations in a message, 3ngleezy
users make assumptions about the age, socio-economic status, and even religious values of a
message composer (see section III. Part ii. For more details). In the time that’s elapsed since I
collected my data, I am confident that 3ngleezy has further developed in ways I haven’t been
able to document.
Beyond the abilities to speak Arabic and write in English, 3ngleezy users also
represent a certain socio-economic privilege. Because the script was created for, and is used
exclusively in, digital spaces, users must have access to cell-phones and networked
computers on a regular basis to become 3ngleezy-fluent. The survey I conducted showed that
3ngleezy users spent 7 or more hours a day in digital spaces, and owned an average of 2.5
networked devices, and this indicates a degree of wealth and access. The survey also revealed
that the heaviest users of 3ngleezy fell in the under-30 age group, and none of the
respondents over age 40 said they used 3ngleezy.
Now that we have some background on the script and its users, I wanted to explain
how the name ‘3ngleezy’ came to be. As I mentioned earlier, I initially referred to it as ‘fused
text’ because the script was a mix of numbers and English alphabet, with numbers fused into
whole words. It was a terrible name, and I hoped my findings would offer a more
representative label. I wanted the users I interviewed to name the language. I wanted them to
name it in a way that would give them a voice in my study, and in a way that was
representative to their community. Early in my interviewing process, when I asked users what
they might name this widespread language, they suggested ‘3ngleezy’. A few also suggested
names like ‘MSN-language’ and ‘English-Arabic’, but they generally agreed that the name
‘3ngleezy’ better embodied the language – both aurally and visually. And so that is what I
have used.
5

i.

The Cultural-Rhetorical Perspective
Because it lies at the intersection of multiple literacies, a study of 3ngleezy engages

several disciplines, including cultural-rhetorics and linguistics. However, I will focus on
using a cultural-rhetorical lens to examine my findings. This is because the relatively small
scale of this project makes it difficult to examine my findings through both lenses, and I think
examining 3ngleezy through a linguistic lens is a worthwhile future project. Furthermore, the
patterns I have gleaned from my interviews (see Section III) lent themselves to a culturalrhetorical analysis. The following section explains the theoretical underpinnings of my
decision to use a cultural-rhetorical approach for this study.
The users (and presumably the developers) of 3ngleezy are bilingual, technologicallysavvy Arab youth. I say technologically-savvy because 3ngleezy is a language for electronic
spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and now email. This is because keypads and keyboards do
not allow easy switching between Arabic and English scripts, so 3ngleezy was developed to
expedite texting for heavy-technology users whose L1 was Arabic. As with all social
phenomena, 3ngleezy use has developed social protocol that impacts how it is used and
interpreted, and I wanted to learn more about this protocol. For instance, was it appropriate to
use fused-text in formal communication? To initiate social contact for the first time? To
express grief? Just as the use of ‘b4’ or ‘2moro’ is inappropriate in, say, a message of
condolence, 3ngleezy also carries its own set of social connotations.
Furthermore, since 3ngleezy has seeped into emailing and social-networking sites, it
has brought its social codes to those arenas as well. Therefore, email—which is often used for
‘professional’ purposes — can take on a different tone if the script in use is 3ngleezy.
To examine such social implications, I thought it would be useful to draw on Stuart Hall’s
“Encoding/Decoding” for its notions of the active recipient and meaning making. More
specifically, I am drawing from Hall’s notions of ‘decoding’, especially as they pertain to the
6

unintended messages that 3ngleezy allows users to decode about encoders (see Section III for
more discussion on this). Hall argues that there is “a space for messages to be understood
against the grain” – against (or beyond) the intent of composers. He also states that “in a
‘determinate’ moment the…code…yields a message: [and] at another determinate moment
the ‘message’, via its decodings, issues into the structure of social practices” (7). My findings
suggest that 3ngleezy is enabling decoders to do exactly that, as its very use transmits and
maintains highly nuanced social structures.
Furthermore, Hall states that:

“the typical processes identified in positivistic research on isolated elements – effects, uses,
‘gratifications’ – are themselves framed by structures of understanding, as well as being
produced by social and economic relations, which shape their ‘realisation’ at the reception
end of the chain and which permit the meanings signified in the discourse to be transposed
into practice or consciousness (to acquire social use value or political effectivity)” (4-5)

Therefore, because my findings suggest that 3ngleezy is enabling decoders to glean
‘against the grain’ messages sustained by the social structures surrounding 3ngleezy, I am not
exploring the structure of 3ngleezy itself but rather the cultures surrounding its use. By
drawing on these specific ideas from Hall’s work, I hope to identify the ‘realisations’ at the
‘reception end of the chains’ that take place in 3ngleezy interactions (see section III.ii for a
fuller discussion).
However, I think Hall’s framework is especially compelling because he employs a
semiotic element in his analysis of visual discourse. And 3ngleezy, with its visual-aural bond,
is a script that complicates notions of discourse-semiotics. When Hall argues that visual
discourse “translates a three-dimensional world into two-dimensional planes, it cannot, of
7

course, be the referent or concept it signifies” (11). But does the visual-aural
interconnectedness of 3ngleezy problematize this claim? It certainly demands more from it.
3ngleezy doesn’t solely re/present verbal-conversational Arabic; it actually transforms
previously-closed spaces into spaces for verbal-conversational Arabic. In other words, has
3ngleezy moved away from simply being a re/presentation to being a referent in its own
right? Therefore, by drawing on Hall’s theories of message production and reception, I hope
to re-examine the semiotics of texts produced in and for increasingly digital spaces.
Finally, it is important to determine why users elect to preserve certain Arabic
markers in 3ngleezy and not others. All 3ngleezy users can speak and write English, so
arguably the digital messages could be 1) all English, 2) Arabic words transcribed to English,
or 3) transcribed Arabic mingled with English. However, these digital-composers decided to
add numbers. Why? What do the numbers convey that an all English-alphabetic script could
not? For one, it injects Arabic sound into the message by adding signs — numbers — that
resemble the Arabic character for that sound. This suggests the importance of sound over
other elements in Arabic narrative, which could be rooted in Bedouin oral tradition. Scholarly
support for the orality of Arab tradition ranges from discussions of Quranic recitation to Arab
folklore (see Vinson’s “Shahrazadian Gestures: Personal Memory, and Oral, Matrilineal
Narratives”). This situates 3ngleezy both historically and culturally—the language of the
digerati built on ancient rhetoric. I explore this idea of Bedouin orality and 3ngleezy more
thoroughly in Section IV.
The exploration of these questions will, I hope, be useful to cultural rhetoricians.
However, it is also of interest to composition instructors in regions where 3ngleezy use is
widespread, especially if elements of 3ngleezy appear in classroom composition. An
understanding of the cultural significance of 3ngleezy might also open up more dialogue on
linguistic diversity in the classroom. Finally, insight on the social codes of 3ngleezy might be
8

useful to marketing campaigns whose target market is the Arab youth. Because 3ngleezy is
still, to a large degree, not understandable to (or at least not used by) older Arabic speakers, it
can convey a degree of exclusivity if used in advertisements. If the message can only be
‘read’ by a certain group, there can be no doubt who the message is for.
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to develop a methodology for this study that
reflected the interdisciplinarity of the topic. I wanted it to reflect the multiple ways in which
3ngleezy can be theorized. I wanted it to include the voices of users who were making
meaning of it, and with it, in varied ways. So I am presenting my methodology as a collage
that I hope represents some of the visual-ness and layered-ness of 3ngleezy itself.

ii.

Methodology as Trail

“I hope for a methodology that recognizes relationality by acknowledging the position of the
researcher in relation to subjects. I hope for a methodology that allows a space for subject
methodologies. I hope for a methodology that is decolonizing, which recognizes that
‘minority’ populations can inscribe technology and not just have technology inscribe them. I
want these hopes to form the basis of a methodology that is (a)cumulative.”
-

Excerpt from an early memo expressing the basis of my methodology

Methodologies are slippery. They exist even if they are not recognized – in which case
their unrecognition becomes part of the methodology. You see the four phrases underlined
above? In this section, I want to see how those four threads weave together into a
methodology for my thesis. Those threads came out of various events, some research-related,
others not. I want to listen for the stories coming out of them. Those stories changed my
position as researcher, and consequently the way I listen to my research and myself.

9

“My research is on a digital-script used by the Arab youth in the UAE. They devised a
method of texting in Arabic using English keypads. A ‘3’ resembles the Arabic ‘aain’
character (‫ ,)ع‬and a ‘7’ resembles the character ‘haah’ ( ‫ .)ح‬Now, young Arabs routinely
type mar7aba (hello), ya3ni (I mean), t3am (food), and 7ala (you’re welcome) in messages.
They are reclaiming what Arab mathematicians developed centuries ago: numbers. Bedouin
tradition is historically oral, stemming from Qur’anic recitation and nomadic lifestyles. This
makes it significant that users of this text want to convey a sense of sound in their messages.”

This is an excerpt from the very first description I wrote on this topic. It’s part of an
abstract that I sent to some faculty, trying to woo them into being on my committee. I emailed
it to three folks, along with a ‘pitch’ I thought they could get behind. I told Bill about the
digital - rhetorics component of the research. I told John about the global studies aspect. I told
Malea about the semiotic component, which is the element that first drew me to the study. I
had spent two years thinking about this language before I wrote my abstract. The faculty I
talked to – now my committee – responded generously.
And then a happy coincidence put me in touch with a visiting scholar. He knew my
topic. He was a linguist and an 3ngleezy user. He lived in Dubai and would be there when I
returned to collect data. The perfect fourth member for my committee. I sent him my abstract
in an email (FIG. 3):

FIG. 3: The Email
10

Bolstered by my committee’s responses to my abstract and initial plans, I felt
confident about pitching my ideas to an outside scholar. I hoped he’d share my enthusiasm at
this happy alignment of research interests. And then I got a response (FIG. 4):

FIG. 4: Response

I was disconcerted, so I re-evaluated my abstract. And then I re-evaluated my subject
position. I was not a member of the community that used the language I was studying. I
wasn’t even Arab. I was entering a realm where my credibility would always be questioned
because of my ethnicity, my researcher positionality. It was the first time I realized that I
might be unwelcome on scholarly territory that was already occupied. This scholar assumed
that if I wanted to continue, I would have to accept his corrections. He assumed that I would
take a linguistics approach, even though I had stated otherwise in my email. He had colonized
the beginnings of my research.

“As scholars, we are taught to search around for a subject, publish on it, claim it, colonize it,
and build our scholarly identities off of it”.
-

Malea Powell, in class

11

After this interaction, I became preoccupied with my position as a researcher, and my
relationships to/ with the user-community. To understand where I stood and how I’d be
perceived by them, I began to map and re-map the relationality between my methodologies
and theirs. The partial maps below depict the groups I’d be engaging as a researcher, and
FIG. 5 shows roles I would/could fill. FIG. 6 illustrates how the various pieces of my identity
– UAE resident, non-Arab, university alumna, etc. – position me in relation to the community
as well as larger theoretical frames.

FIG. 5: Researcher Roles

FIG. 6: Relationality

12

Having begun my project with reflections on colonization, I became determined not
just to hear the voices of participants in my research, but their methodologies as well. I did
not want to assume that I was the first to theorize their language. I did not want to name their
language for them. Just because there was little (US, institutional, English-language)
scholarship on the topic didn’t mean users weren’t theorizing 3ngleezy. And they were.

“Our teacher calls it Arabizi, but that’s not right. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t show the character
of the language.”

“I think it’s a twist on English. It’s English, Arabic-style. For MSN chats and all stuffs [sic]. I
call it 3ngleezy.”

The excerpts above come from some of the conversations I had with users of the
language. After one of them coined the term ‘3ngleezy’ based on the rationale above, I
pitched the name to other users. Many of them liked how the name embodied the language,
and asked me to use it in my research. I said I would.

“Groups may differ in their presentation of theory, but not in…capacity to theorize” (5).
-

Lee Maracle, “On Oratory”

“Relational accountability invites the community into the methodology…to develop an
indigenous paradigm that [they] can use forms of expressions that [they] judge to be valid
for [themselves]” (14).
-

Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony

13

There were other ways to bring their voices into my work. During our conversations,
I noticed that interviewees could not stop themselves from scribbling 3ngleezy on scraps of
paper (FIG. 7). I wondered why they were doing that – perhaps for my benefit, since I was a
community outsider? When I pointed it out to them, they were surprised – they hadn’t even
realized they were doing it. Some of them told me that 3ngleezy was a language that was
more connected to its written script than most languages. The script existed solely to convey
sound, they explained. They were theorizing.

FIG. 7: A photograph of a text produced during interviews

I collected the scribbles that came out of those conversations. They existed as an archive
within my research, helping me reconstruct narratives that would otherwise be lost. In the
bottom right corner of the picture above, I see my own handwriting. I’d written down Hindi
words I’d phonetically transcribed to English. During our conversation, I was trying to talk
through how my own experiences intersected with my interviewees’; how our textual
practices overlapped. If it weren’t for this collection of scraps, I would have forgotten this
moment when our methodologies – researcher and ‘subject’ – began to meld.

14

FIG. 8: Unheard Narratives: a map I created while planning my methodology

“The problem is not that [narratives] are being silenced, but being unheard” (50).
-

Emma Perez, The Decolonial Imaginery

And so I went back into this archive, hoping to retrieve those methodological instances and
stories that I believed were unheard (see FIG. 8).
My most productive interviews were the result of a happy coincidence. As I was
walking around my undergrad campus in Sharjah, I ran into two women I knew as a
sophomore – Nauf and Noora. They were now MA students in translation, as well as
3ngleezy users. I told them about my research. We found a table at the library coffee shop
and talked for three hours. When I got back to Michigan I found this in my inbox:

FIG. 9: Correspondence
15

Not only was Nauf continuing to inform my methodology, but she was incorporating
my methodology into her thesis (see FIG. 9) – which she was in the process of writing. She
asked me how I’d like my name spelled in her acknowledgements. We’ve since been in
touch.
It is easy for me to assume that the user-community is not theorizing my research
topic. It is convenient to assume that I am the first to ‘discover’ my findings, and only I have
the expert knowledge to decipher them. But Nauf and Noora brought both translationexpertise and insider-knowledge of 3ngleezy to the table.

“The privilege of discovery is the colonizer’s alone” (28)
-

Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument”

But there was another striking narrative that came out of my many conversations with
3ngleezy users that I didn’t want to leave untold. The users repeatedly expressed contempt
for 3ngleezy, and disgust at having to use to it.

“It’s not a real language. It’s just made-up.”

“We shouldn’t distort the Qur’an’s language”

“It’s polluting English and Arabic.”

“My dad makes me retype anything I write in 3ngleezy.”

16

I heard these statements over and over again in my interviews. I began to recognize
that, when it came to making sense of 3ngleezy, the methodologies of users were based on
religion and a sense of language ‘purity’. 3ngleezy users saw the language as an admission of
defeat, that they could neither express themselves fully in English nor in Arabic. And yet,
3ngleezy was empowering them to bring the rhetorical richness of Arabic to digital spaces.

“For me, [language] was a tool that I wanted to use in developing a new means of
expression, so that while still being French [I could retain] a black character” (83).
-

Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism

And so my methodology expanded to include an exploration of how 3ngleezy was
empowering, enabling, and returning agency to users. I was especially pushed to confront that
question when I had to address the following prompt (FIG 10):

FIG. 10: The Need for Scholarship

And I wrote:
We need to study this now because studies on technology use in the Middle-East treat user
populations as though they are passive. Studying 3ngleezy demonstrates how users bend
technology, and not just how technology bends users. Exploring 3ngleezy necessitates a
decolonizing methodology
17

3ngleezy’s use was widespread, but my interviewees still regarded it as a trivial,
inconsequential language. But on February 15, I woke up to a startling realization of how
users were being enabled and empowered by 3ngleezy. I watched the revolutions sweep
through Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt. Then Libya, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain. The
youth across these nations had been galvanized, and they were using digital spaces to power
the revolution. These spaces were overflowing with nationalistic messages in 3ngleezy.

FIG 11: The 2011 Revolution – sparked by digital media, sustained by 3ngleezy

Those that I interviewed thought 3ngleezy was a language of convenience, not of
purpose. It was never ‘serious’, they said. However, 3ngleezy returned the power of activism
to the youth of the Middle East and North Africa. It gave them a voice that people heard, and
18

listened to. And so in light of these startling events, I re-assessed my own approaches and
methodology.
When I presented my research at the CCCC 2011, I changed my introduction. Instead
of beginning with a description of 3ngleezy, I began with images of its impacts (see FIG. 11).
My methodology had shifted: I was no longer as concerned about pitching the importance of
studying 3ngleezy, but newly awakened to its social and political capital. These
methodological principles acted as a guide as I determined the most appropriate research
methods to use for this study. Those methods are detailed below.

iii.

Methods
I used three data collection techniques for this study: questionnaires, scenario-

responses, and interviews. Ordinarily, I would focus my energies on the interviews and
scenario responses because they would yield the more descriptive and detailed data, which
would allow me to acknowledge multiple realities. However, my research topic occupies an
unusual position in that it has received almost no scholarly attention save for a single article:
Palfreyman and Khalil’s “A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use” (2006). Furthermore, this
piece engages a morphological rather than socio-cultural approach, referring to the script as
‘AA’ or ASCII-ized Arabic (ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for
Information Interchange). As a result, this absence of scholarship on the social capital of
3ngleezy meant that I needed some empirical, investigative data before I could implement my
other research methods. I needed to determine who to pick for interviews before I could
interview them, and I did that based on the results of the questionnaires.
The Questionnaire: The purpose of this method was to gather demographic
information on the users of 3ngleezy. Because little research has been done on 3ngleezy, I
needed to collect statistical information to determine some characteristics of the target group.
19

This was not so much a finding in itself as it was a way for me to determine who to interview.
For instance, certain bilingual Arab youth may not use 3ngleezy if they were educated
entirely in Arabic-medium schools, and the questionnaires helped expose these subtle
differences. Based on the responses, I also determined which respondents were the heaviest
users of 3ngleezy, and I tried to recruit as many of them as I could for the interviewing and
scenario-response portions of the research.
The method itself was simple. The questionnaires were disseminated electronically to
75 people through email, Facebook, and Twitter. This meant that I knew most of the
individuals that I contacted, either directly or indirectly. Because response rates to
questionnaires tend to be low, it helped that I knew many of the survey-takers and it may
have raised the response rates. I also slipped a few 3ngleezy phrases into the subject of my
email as well as the questions in the survey to create an interest in my study and increase
response rate. The questionnaire contained two widely-used 3ngleezy phrases – ya3ni (“I
mean”) and 7ala (“okay/you’re welcome”) – to illustrate my topic. I also included questions
about respondent age, profession, nationality, languages spoken, languages written, how
frequently they used 3ngleezy, and the media (eg. Twitter, email, etc.) in which they used it.
Scenario Responses & Interviews: Since little research has been done on 3ngleezy, I
am in the fortunate position where participants have probably not yet developed ‘triggered
responses’ from overexposure to questions on this topic. Therefore, I could ask participants to
respond to hypothetical social scenarios to determine whether or not 3ngleezy would be
effective or appropriate to use in those situations. I also provided situations in which I
believed 3ngleezy use would be inappropriate, and asked participants to respond to those
situations.
An example of a scenario:
The following is a text-message sent by a college student offering condolence to a friend.
20

Ya A7mad, bas 7araam. Anta ab… alf aasif ya sadeeq.
(Approximate translation: Ahmad, it’s terrible. I heard about your father. Really sorry my
friend.)
When I implemented this method, to my surprise I found that I needed to reassure
participants that they were the ‘experts’ in that situation and that there were no ‘wrong’
responses. They also had the opportunity to clarify or extend their responses in the follow-up
interview. During the interview, I also initiated the semiotics-driven discussion on whether
3ngleezy can (or is?) destabilizing the way numbers are ‘read’.
The scenarios preceded the interviews because the scenario responses focus on the use
of 3ngleezy rather than user perceptions of it (which was tackled in the interviews). This
meant I was asking participants to make a decision on the use of 3ngleezy based on a
situation I had provided, and the follow-up interviews then interrogated why they made those
decisions. Furthermore, I hoped that asking participants to react to the use of 3ngleezy in
unorthodox situations would highlight its implicit social codes — another issue I wanted to
address in the interviews.
I decided to limit the scenario-response participants to those who demonstrated heavy
3ngleezy use in the questionnaires, but I also enlisted two non-users. The non-users helped
me determine how accessible (or inaccessible) 3ngleezy was to ‘out-groups’. Ultimately, I
enlisted 15 participants for the scenario-responses, and the same 15 for the interviews. The
scenario-responses took approximately 20 minutes to complete and were administered faceto-face. The interviews varied from 20 minutes to three hours in length, and the duration was
always determined by the participants themselves. The interviews were loosely structured
with no pre-set interview questions as the questions arose from the responses to the scenarios.
All the interviews were conducted face-to-face in public spaces, such as libraries, coffee
shops, and parks.
21

I spent some time thinking about the best way to record the interview transcripts, and
I decided the most reliable method would be to tape-record the discussions. This was to
ensure I didn’t record just those details that interested me or confirmed my assumptions,
which is a danger many researchers face when researching familiar communities (see Beverly
Moss’ discussion of auto-ethnography in “Studying Language at Home”). Furthermore, taperecordings also captured speaker tone and voice-emphasis. This was especially important
because many of the participants were non-native speakers of English, which means that
voice-emphasis, tone, and hesitation — which my written notes would miss — were
particularly significant. But I also had notepaper and pencils on hand to record ideas that I
wanted to bring up later.
At this point, I would like to describe the findings that these research methods
yielded. These findings identify and document social and linguistic patterns in the use of
3ngleezy. My aim is not to provide a case study/ies, but instead understand the attitudes and
social rules surrounding the use of 3ngleezy.

III.

Findings

i.

User Attitudes and 3ngleezy
As a researcher in a community I was familiar with but not a member of, I tried to

avoid looking for patterns because it could cause me to overlook crucial details. In this case,
my partial knowledge could be more harmful than no knowledge. Instead, I tried to listen to
and for commonalities in narratives without aiming for them. So I thought it was very
interesting when all fifteen interviewees I engaged articulated the same attitude towards
3ngleezy. They thought it was silly, shallow, and lacked seriousness. They called it a “made-

22

up” system of communication that wasn’t valuable, shouldn’t appear in print, and that they
would never, ever use in formal interaction.
All the interviewees rejected the term ‘language’ to describe 3ngleezy, primarily
referring to it as a ‘way of speaking’ or ‘slang language’. These comments afforded me a
glimpse of what ‘constitutes’ a language to different communities. I often think the term
‘language’ is bestowed on those systems of communication that become dominant. However,
if language-status is bestowed based on the number of people who use it, 3ngleezy would
certainly make the cut. There are possibly more 3ngleezy users than speakers of any one
dialect of Arabic – whether Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, or Tunisian. This is because
3ngleezy cuts across Arabic dialects, and is almost equally intelligible to the Arabic-speaking
digerati of any country. But despite its wide use, it was almost universally dismissed by all
my interviewees. Did 3ngleezy occupy such a low status in their minds because of its
inherent characteristics, or because it was contrasted with the classical Arabic script?
The more I talked to 3ngleezy users, the more reasons they gave me to believe the
latter. Several interviewees admitted feeling ‘guilty’ about using 3ngleezy because they
considered the addition of each number an attack on the language of the Qur’an. Because
Arabic occupies the unique status of being the language of Islam, it occupies a sacred status
in the minds of Arab Muslims. Even the non-Muslim Arabs I interviewed recognized this
status. Three interviewees expressed concern that classical Arabic – the language of the
Qur’an – was already in disuse. Even worse, 3ngleezy was now annihilating the very script of
the language, which was cited as a major source of guilt in the interviews. In my conversation
with two 3ngleezy users who were also translation scholars, they pointed out something I had
overlooked: the language of the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet (called Hadith) were
never transcribed in 3ngleezy. Ever. It was just too disrespectful, they said. 11 of the 15
interviewees stated that they wouldn’t need to ‘resort’ to 3ngleezy had they been educated in
23

Arabic. They said they used it only because they were used to writing in English but more
used to conversing in Arabic, and that this ‘unfortunate’ combination made it necessary for
them to devise a system that combined these dis/abilities.
Another reason several (eight) interviewees cited for their guilt at using 3ngleezy was
that they felt it eroded national identity. English occupies a second-language status in many
Middle-Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait,
Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan. This means that English is often the language of commerce,
higher education, and news media in these countries. Therefore, it is unsurprising that citizens
feel concerned that the ‘globalization of languages’ (or the dominance of English) is a threat
to national identity. Arab identity is closely tied to the regional dialect of Arabic, both
because it encapsulates cultural values that cannot be articulated in English and because it is
the language of the region’s dominant religion. For this reason, three of the interviewees
expressed disgust at the thought of seeing 3ngleezy in print. They believed that it was
offering far too much validation to a ‘non-language’ that shouldn’t be encouraged in the first
place. One of them mentioned seeing a restaurant sign saying Na3Na3 (which means mint
[see FIG. 12]) and feeling a sense of horror that 3ngleezy might gain such prominence; she
wanted it to remain a discourse that was confined to the spaces of text-messages and MSN.
She also rued the fact that because the restaurant name was in 3ngleezy, the name did not
appear in the Arabic script, as it would have otherwise (along with an English transliteration).

FIG. 12: A restaurant sign in 3ngleezy

24

My interviewees repeatedly described 3ngleezy as a “corruption” of both English and
Arabic; a crutch they used because they could not express themselves in “perfect” English or
Arabic. They regretted that they needed a “made-up language” because they could not fully
express themselves in a “proper language”. Even though 3ngleezy was a powerful tool
enabling users in previously limited spaces, users were carrying negative attitudes towards it.
These prevailing negative attitudes surprised me, and were complicated by the fact that users
still expressed affection for 3ngleezy in certain contexts. They were expressing the belief that
certain communication systems may still not be legitimate despite their ability to build
community.
During the interviews, the 3ngleezy users repeatedly communicated a desire for
language ‘purity’, as well as a desire to speak a ‘standardized’ variety of Arabic and English
– and they believed 3ngleezy undermined both these efforts. That a community can be the
biggest disparagers of their system of communication is not new or unique to 3ngleezy, nor
even a recent phenomenon. Indeed such prevailing attitudes are relics of a post-colonial era,
where linguistic innovation is often dismissed in an attempt to retain a sort of linguistic
‘purity’ that has been put in place by the dominant group. The particularly insidious aspect
about such language-based discrimination is that it doesn’t just compare other languages to
English; it is a heuristic through which communities compare their own languages to each
other using colonial ideals of ‘purity’ – in the way that users were comparing 3ngleezy to
Arabic and finding the former ‘lacking’.
This research does not reveal but rather reinforces what linguists and educators have
been discussing for decades: how language-based discrimination is internalized by usercommunities. Geneva Smitherman is a powerful voice in this discussion, especially as it
pertains to the negative attitudes towards African-American Language (AAL). In Talkin That
Talk (2000), she outlines the events of the King v. Ann Arbor case, from which I learned that
25

African-American educators – who Smitherman calls “boojy Black ‘leaders’” (2005, pg. 58)
were some of the harshest critics of the decision to train public school teachers to understand
AAL. I was struck by the language these African-American educators used to protest the
decision. They said AAL was “not a real language”, “made-up”, and “lazy English”
(Smitherman, 2000, pp. 551-557). It was strikingly similar to how users were describing
3ngleezy. Once again, the derision came from within the community.
Smitherman posits that the most effective way to change negative attitudes towards a
language is to begin by changing user attitudes. Smitherman states that “American English
would be shonuf wack without contributions from US Ebonics. Doan know why sometime
we Black folk be actin like we ain got sense enough to know what we got!” (2005, pg 57).
Therefore, her scholarly efforts focus on reinforcing the rhetorical value of AAL and its
contribution to the language of wider communication. Smitherman adopted a
“‘codeswitching” approach in her writing to enable [her scholarship] to appeal not only to a
broad array of disciplines outside the field of linguistics, but also to the lay audience and the
community.” (DoBell, 2008 [emphasis mine]).
At a conference earlier this year, an audience member asked me how I proposed to
‘teach’ 3ngleezy to non-users in the US classroom. He assumed that that was my intention,
which it wasn’t. My research intentions, I explained, were similar to Dr. Smitherman’s with
AAL: to recognize the rhetorical strengths of the language, and then describe them to users.
Just as Dr. Smitherman advocates that educators know the fundamentals of AAL, I too
believe that understanding the rhetorical and social capital of 3ngleezy would benefit
educators in the Middle East and North Africa. However, more research on the structure of
3ngleezy needs to be done before such a goal can be set.

26

ii.

3ngleezy’s Social Rules
Another attitude that all my interviewees articulated was that 3ngleezy was

completely inappropriate to use in conversation with anyone they shared a formal relationship
with. They said this in response to a scenario I put forward: a student sending an Arabicspeaking professor an email in 3ngleezy. Every interviewee said that it was wildly
inappropriate to do such a thing. It didn’t matter that the teacher was an 3ngleezy user. When
I asked if it was because they felt uncomfortable being so familiar with teachers, they said no.
Instead, they said it was because they “knew for a fact” that those who were older and/or in
positions of authority hated 3ngleezy. A few of them told stories of how their parents
disciplined them for the occasional 3ngleezy slip. One interviewee said her dad forced her to
retype 3ngleezy messages in the Arabic script; another said that her aunt sent her a scathing
message in response to receiving an 3ngleezy message from her. Those who did enjoy using
the language (and even admitted to having a fondness for it) continually said that their
parents berated them for using it. Why? Their parents cited the reasons mentioned earlier:
national, religious, and cultural-identity erosion.
But what about the formal relationships they had with younger individuals who were
fluent in 3ngleezy? Might they converse with a young aunt, or a young teacher using
3ngleezy? Well, they said, that depended. On what? On the cues those individuals gave them.
Like what? Four out of the fifteen interviewees said that cousins or acquaintances who typed
in the Arabic script were probably “conservative”, or “old-fashioned”, or “religious”, and
even “not well-off” (financially). If someone from their generation used the Arabic script in a
casual typed exchange, it was a warning to tread carefully – here were people who wouldn’t
appreciate a mixing of symbols. I asked them why the Arabic script signalled
conservativeness, and not simply a lack of proficiency in English. They asserted that such
individuals were usually a product of Arabic-medium schooling, and that such schools tended
27

to be in more remote areas, less expensive, and tended to have a greater focus on religious
studies than English-medium schools. These nuanced insights, gleaned from messages by
3ngleezy users, hearken back to Stuart Hall’s argument that discourses can yield messages
about social practices through decodings that are otherwise concealed to the untrained eye.
Since users were signalling that 3ngleezy use was inappropriate in formal situations, I
had to ask: was it also inappropriate for serious situations? Could you, say, offer condolence
in 3ngleezy? Of the seven interviewees I posed this scenario to, five said yes – if, and only if,
the person they were condoling was a close friend. They explained that 3ngleezy could be
used for formal and serious exchanges with someone you have a casual relationship with.
However, it could not be used for casual, informal exchanges with someone you have a
formal relationship with. With 3ngleezy use, it appears, the personal relationship users share
trumps situational context.
Then I asked about the ‘default-ness’ of 3ngleezy. Was it a language they defaulted to
if they were communicating with someone they hadn’t yet established a relationship with?
For instance, if they exchanged numbers with an Arab student they’d just met in class, would
they text them in 3ngleezy asking about homework? All the (seven) respondents I posed the
question to said yes, provided: a) the relationship was not obviously formal (i.e. there wasn’t
an obvious power/social imbalance) and b) the recipient wasn’t significantly older than them.
In those instances, it was sensible to open the conversation with 3ngleezy even if they
weren’t friends with the person they were messaging. Using the Arabic script, they explained,
would signal ‘stuffed-shirtness’, and an all-English message would seem pretentious. In this
case, 3ngleey was the most effective linguistic tool to convey in-groupness with one swift
rhetorical choice.
Speaking of in-groupness, 3ngleezy users can discern various factors about other
users based on the presence (or absence) of newer 3ngleezy innovations. As I explained in the
28

methodology section, 3ngleezy is a growing script with newer symbols being incorporated
into the system to represent a greater range of Arabic characters. But what’s interesting is
that, based on the presence of these newer signs, users make assumptions about the age,
conservativeness, religious values, and even the socioeconomic status of other 3ngleezy
users. One of my interviewees, a 25 year-old graduate student, said that she could tell when
her cousin was impersonating her older sister on MSN because she would use “some new
characters that [the interviewee] couldn’t understand”. The interviewee also said that such
exchanges made her feel “really old”.
Similarly, three other interviewees said they could tell the educational and religious
background of others purely based on the way they used 3ngleezy. If someone used the
Arabic script in digital spaces, they might be “conservative and religious” because they
believed “3ngleezy was polluting the language of the Qur’an”. Or else they had received a
governmental school education, where every subject is taught in Arabic – thus making them
most proficient with the Arabic script.
These responses make it clear that users are actively theorizing 3ngleezy, and they
certainly illustrate the many ways in which composers and receivers actively encode and
decode the social contexts of messages based on the medium. Since 3ngleezy allows message
recipients to actively decode the social background of composers, it might classify as a ‘cool
medium’ (to use McLuhan’s term). Furthermore, these findings also illustrate that 3ngleezy
use is entrenched in social phenomena worth exploring by cultural rhetoricians. These social
phenomena carry cultural-rhetorical implications that I’d like to explore in the next section.

IV.

Analysis: 3ngleezy’s oral, aural, and visual rhetorics
Because 3ngleezy can reveal so much about user backgrounds, it is an especially

powerful language to enable social mobilization. In digital spaces (such as blogs and
29

YouTube) where participants are often faceless but not identity-less, the use of 3ngleezy
allows groups to band together because it connotes shared religious, cultural, and educational
backgrounds. But I began to wonder: beyond conveying a shared background, does 3ngleezy
also perform the cultures of its users?
I ask this question because my interviewees repeatedly told me that, despite its
‘shortcomings’, 3ngleezy communicated something that was important to them: the sounds of
their conversational Arabic(s). I wondered why this aural/oral aspect of conversation was so
important, and whether it might be rooted in region-based cultures. For one thing, traditional
Bedouin lifestyles, which involved frequent movement, created a strong narrative-based
culture because documents were rarely produced and transported. Furthermore, Bedouin
tribes often maintained a cohesive identity by telling stories specific to their group, and over
time developed dialectical patterns distinct to their tribe (Sowayan, 1992). In this way, group
identity became tied to the oral and aural aspects of Bedouin Arabic, and it may explain why
this emphasis on oral/aurality persists among 3ngleezy users today.
Another possible explanation could be that Islamic tradition, which is strongly oral,
has influenced 3ngleezy users’ rhetorical choices. In Muslim countries, the call for prayer –
the azaan – can be heard five times a day. The azaan issues from the minarets of mosques to
enhance the acoustics, and they are made by mu’azzins – officials selected to lead the
prayers. Among other reasons, mu’azzins are coveted for their sonorous voices and training
in tilawa, which is the ability to recite verses from the Qur’an with a certain musicality.
Musicologist Eve McPherson, who studies the Muslim call for prayer, posits that the “vocal
timbre [of a mu’azzin’s] voice has communicative capabilities that transcend language”
(McPherson, 2005). 3ngleezy seeks to create a similar transcendence, as it is a script created
with the purpose to mimic sound. Furthermore, since the majority of 3ngleezy users are either

30

Muslim or familiar with Islamic cultures, it is possible that the orality of Islamic tradition has
impacted the creation of 3ngleezy.
But beyond the oral-rhetorical component, 3ngleezy also carries a visual appeal for
users. During interviews, several of the interviewees remarked that they enjoyed using
3ngleezy because it was visually attractive. In fact, the connection between the verbal and the
visual in 3ngleezy is so strong that my interviewees could not talk about the symbols without
sketching them .
But when I pressed them for more specific details, two of the interviewees said that
they liked the symmetry present in 3ngleezy texts, created by using the mirror-image of
numbers as Arabic characters. Another interviewee said she thought the mix of numbers and
alphabet made her messages look “balanced and harmonized”. I found this affinity for
symmetry striking, especially since geometrical pattering is the basis of most Islamic art. The
pictures below (taken in UAE mosques) are two of many examples of symmetrical patterning
in Islamic art (see FIG. 13). The sort of geometric calligraphy pictured below is highly
coveted, and often used in transcribing verses from the Qur’an to create decorative art.
Because such patterning is so visible in the Middle East and North Africa, I wondered
if such patterns have become a part of the Arab subconscious. And if this is the case, where a
textual alphabetic medium is being used for artistic purposes, does it (to use Hall’s words)
become the “referent or concept it signifies”? If 3ngleezy is fulfilling dual semiotic roles of
signifier and sign through its textual representation and aesthetics, it certainly challenges the
idea that ‘text’ is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world. It is
fascinating to see these patterns, if indeed they have been internalized, appear as a visual
rhetoric in 3ngleezy. It is also worth asking whether such symmetry manifests in other
unlikely spaces and texts, creating an embedded visual argument that only an in-group
member can recognize.
31

FIG. 13: Examples of symmetrical Islamic Art
Some instances of 3ngleezy symmetry:
3

‫ع‬

6

9
‫ص‬

There is an additional rhetorical layer to 3ngleezy that I was able to identify. As I
discussed in the methodology section, every one of my interviewees expressed strongly
negative attitudes towards the use of 3ngleezy, despite recognizing its popularity,
convenience and visual appeal. The most commonly cited reason was that 3ngleezy
undermined the linguistic purity of Arabic, which is especially sacred to users because it is
the language of the Qur’an. However, the numbers as we know them today are historically
Arabic, and are technically called ‘Arabic numerals’. Even the term algebra stems from the
Arabic phrase al-jibr. While this history has become backgrounded over time, the use of
numbers in 3ngleezy actually perpetuates Arabic rhetoric by reclaiming the Arabic-numeral
system.

32

So ironically, even though users believe that 3ngleezy-use erodes Arab identity, a
closer look reveals that it is actually reifying Arabic rhetorics on multiple levels: the visual
level, the aural level, the numerical level (see FIG. 14). In fact, 3ngleezy is making it possible
for these rhetorics to permeate digital spaces, where it has demonstrated its astounding ability
to catalyze social movement.

FIG. 14: A Summary

V.

The Future?
As I examined my data, I spent almost as much time reflecting on what my study

wouldn’t address as on what it would. This is a small scale exploratory study, and 3ngleezy is
a widely-used, rhetorically rich, and little explored phenomenon. Several questions came up
during the research stages, and I want to use this space to pose those questions.
Probably the first thing to strike me about 3ngleezy, well before I began this research,
was the semiotic implications of using numbers to represent sounds. If 3ngleezy users are
using numbers to signify sound rather than quantity, what might be the long-term impact of
such a semiotic-shift? I toyed with the thought of 3ngleezy users ‘reading’ speed limits and
other numerical signs as sounds. I asked a few of my interviewees if something like that
33

might happen, if they might hear a sound rather than see a quantity when presented with a
number. All of them said no, that the context would make it clear how a number should be
read. But they also added that such a shift, unlikely though it might be, could happen in the
long term. It is worthwhile to examine 3ngleezy through a Saussurian framework, and to
interrogate how we interpret and reassign signifiers more broadly.
Another question that came up was whether 3ngleezy would be the more effective
choice for English-Arabic subtitling in various media. Nauf, the 3ngleezy-using translation
scholar I interviewed, pointed out that 3ngleezy’s social embeddedness made it a much more
effective choice for movie subtitling. She explained that the current English-Arabic subtitling
of Hollywood movies, which appeared in the Arabic script, alienated most of its intended
audience: the digitally-savvy, English-medium educated, 3ngleezy-using crowd. And because
such a crowd would be more comfortable reading 3ngleezy than Arabic, they would struggle
to keep pace with the Arabic-script subtitles. Since the biggest consumers of Hollywood
movies in the Middle East fall in the below-40 age group, it is reasonable to assume that the
majority of those consumers are 3ngleezy users. If they were not 3ngleezy users, they were
likely to be Arabic-medium educated, less familiar with conversational English, and therefore
less likely to consume Hollywood movies. Nouf also made the intelligent point that using
3ngleezy would allow some of the voice acting to be represented in the subtitles. Since
3ngleezy exists primarily to represent the sounds of conversation, it can better translate the
sounds of English conversation to conversational Arabic. Nauf expressed interest in exploring
the subtitling-potential of 3ngleezy, and it might be worthwhile to do a controlled study of
how viewers respond to 3ngleezy vs. Arabic-script subtitling across various media.
The 3ngleezy phenomenon is also an interesting one to study using perspectives from
code-meshing. Code-meshing is presently defined as the act of fusing English and nonEnglish dialects with Edited American English (2006). However, this definition leaves out
34

the possibility of code-meshing being a multimodal (and not just multi lingual/dialectical)
phenomenon. What I hope to add to this theory of code meshing is this theory of
multimodality: the multimodality of borrowing from various sign systems, as well as the
multimodality of representing the oral, aural, and visual in one script. Not only are the sign
systems being meshed, but so are the sensory representations. 3ngleezy offers a fascinating
illustration of the limitlessness of code-meshing and its rhetorical affects.
Furthemore, I am interested in the much broader question of how people use socialdigital systems to remain connected during times of upheaval and/or disaster, and the more
specific question of why 3ngleezy is particularly effective in doing so. Liza Potts’ work is
especially instrumental in helping me think through these questions. She examines the use of
digital networks during events such as the Mumbai shootings and London bombings, and
how such networks are used to disseminate information, rally groups, and facilitate activism
when there is the threat of physical harm (2009). In the wake of the 2011 Middle East and
North Africa revolutions, I am especially interested in the specific ways in which 3ngleezy
was used to circulate information to mobilize social action. While the analysis section of this
study partially addresses this question, it would be interesting to examine 3ngleezy use
specifically in crisis situations.
A study of 3ngleezy also critiques the argument that social networking sites are the
single most important tool in allowing the composition and dissemination of social
information. This is because 3ngleezy demonstrates that it is not the space but the language
used within that space that needs to be foregrounded (or at the very least acknowledged).
When the Arab revolution began, digital scholars ‘credited’ Twitter and Facebook for
successfully mobilizing youth groups into protest. According to Kwak et al, Twitter is a
social network and news medium (2011). Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman calls it the
“medium of the [Arab revolutionary] movement” (2011). Java et al believe it is responsible
35

for creating and sustaining micro-blogging communities because it allows “users with similar
intentions” to “connect with each other” (2011). However, 3ngleezy is also greatly
responsible for many of these social impacts during the revolution. In fact, my findings
indicate that it is an astonishingly nuanced medium through which “users with similar
intentions” can connect. If 3ngleezy use can communicate user age, socio-economic status,
education and religious background, its presence in social-networking spaces is what
facilitates much of the social-networking.
Just as 3ngleezy lies at the intersection of various social and communication systems,
so does potential for its future study. As a research subject, it holds promise and pertinence
for cultural rhetoricians, linguists, digital writers and communication scholars. But beyond
that, it offers a glimpse into how users bend technology to present and re/present identity.
While there is no denying that technology has the power to influence and mold users, it is
also important to remember the ways in which users mold technology to reclaim agency.

36

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