The present study aims at investigating SMS texts written by educated Iraqis. An attempt is made so as to analyze such texts in view of selected sociolinguistic variables. A number of SMS texts written by a number of educated Iraqis (university graduates) form the obtained data for the study. A number of university graduates, with various academic degrees, have been selected as a representing sample. The work of Thurlow (2005) has been adopted as the model of investigation and analysis. The manipulation and approach of tackling the main trend of this study fall in the domain of socio-compuational linguistics. Factors such as educational level and gender are considered in data manipulation. Computer-aided text analysis packages, such as OCP (Oxford Concordance Program) and WordSmith have been used. Furthermore, the statistical analysis of the obtained data involves the use of statisitcal tests such as ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) within the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) statistical package. The results of the analysis provided a wide view of the interrelationahip between the selected social variables and the type and nature of the SMS texts which are written by the educated Iraqis.
Keywords: Arabic Linguistics, Sms Texts, Socio-Computational Linguistics, Texting
