Romanised Arabic Chat Data

Chat room conversations in Romanised Arabic (44.83%), including code switching in English (4.68%) and French (9.44%). The Romanised Arabic form primarily denoted the Levantine dialect (Lebanese, Egyptian) among 10 participants. These conversations were recorded under natural observation on 10th June 2015 in intervals of 90 minutes. All instances of data collection occurred between midday-2pm, Lebanese local time; they are listed in consecutive order.

Conversations were collected on the instant messaging website, www.icq.com, and specifically, the chat room server titled ‘#icq-lebanon’. As per the terms outlined in the website company policy on 10th June 2015, no consent was required to use the chat room entries or other information from the online users, who constitute the participants of this study.

Any data which marked personally identifiable information has been excluded, unless considered relevant for the purpose of the linguistic analysis.