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This book is a collection of research papers which tackle various aspects of linguistics. Special focus is laid upon sociolinguistic variation in Iraq and the use of SMS by educated Iraqis. Data elicitation and manipulation took place using the techniques adopted by scholars like William Labov and Lesley Milroy. The "variable rules" technique has been adopted in data collection. Labov´s work in New York City and the Milroy´s study in Belfast inspired the works which form the backbone of this book. Furthermore, the SMS study, with the others within the book, have come up with a view of the linguistic behavior of the Iraqis in terms of the association between the selected linguistic variables with some social variables such as gender, education and region. It is hoped that this book can be of use to people and researchers who are interested in Applied linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language Variation and Arabic Linguistics.

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Al-Nawas, Raad
Professor Raad Shakir Al-Nawas is a teaching staff member - the Department of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Thi Qar, Iraq. His academic qualifications involve B.A. in English , University of Basrah, Iraq, M.A. in Applied Linguistics, University of Essex, UK and Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics, University of Leeds, UK.

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