The relationship between university students' language on Facebook pages and their cultural alienation: A study within the framework of semiotic analysis

The study aimed to analyze the semiotic language of young people on Facebook pages and its relationship to their cultural alienation. This was done through the main question: What is the relationship between the language used on Facebook pages by Egyptian university youth and their cultural alienation, and the differences between the levels of language used through a semiotic study of it? This was done by relying on the theory of semiotics with its various analytical schools, including the schools of media discourse analysis, linguistic, semiotic, and cultural. The researcher relied on the qualitative tool: Focus Group Discussion, to measure the axes of cultural alienation and the relationship of this use to cultural alienation in the intentional study sample of young people between the ages of 18 and 22 years. They were divided into 8 groups equally between males and females, each group consisting of 8 individuals from the respondents. The content analysis tool was also used for the sample of the intentional analytical study, which consisted of three of the most used electronic pages on Facebook. The results of the study proved that: The semiotic significance of the language used on the social networking site (Facebook) is due to the existence of several different levels of this language, which are: (Classical Arabic - Contemporary Classical Arabic or the colloquial of the educated - colloquial Arabic - Franco-Arab), with differences in the order of its use by the study sample. The use of Franco-Arabic by some of the respondents for several different reasons indicates that there is a state of family and social estrangement between the families and youth of this society. The results of the study related to the manifestations of the positive influence of the language of social networking sites on youth culture, showed that there is a state of consensus among the study sample groups on the necessity of adhering to preserving the correct Arabic language. As for the results related to the manifestations of the negative impact of the language of social networking sites on youth culture, they indicated the existence of a large and influential state of deterioration and weakness of the Arabic language used on social networking sites, leading to distancing from religious teachings and cultural identity, which ends up creating a state of cultural and linguistic alienation among these youth in close proportions between different intertwined dimensions that constitute this alienation, which are: Religion, language, history, customs, traditions, belonging and society as a result of their use of these sites. The results also highlighted the existence of a large and pivotal role for social networking sites in losing control over cultural identity standards. The semiotic study of language proved the existence of a state of difference between the levels of language used on Facebook. The diversity of verbal and symbolic connotations behind these texts, which received significant interaction from university students using the pages and website of the study sample, and the cognitive, political, and social levels of young Facebook users came within a framework of simple cognitive significance of the language they used. The results also demonstrated a significant relationship between the language used at its various levels, which influences the cultural, cognitive, and historical identity of society and its individuals, and the youth who use that language across various media platforms, and social media as the new face of media in light of the rapid growth of technology.
Keywords:
semiotic analysis - social media - cultural alienation