La Terminologie Arabe de la Téléphonie Mobile: Socioterminologie de la Créativité de l’imaginaire Populaire

Abstract

This paper deals with the socioterminological phenomena on popular terminological creation concerning the nicknames of mobile telephones in the Middle East. The mobile telephones’ models are numerous, various and recurrent, and there official names are always composed of four digitals often followed by a letter, which make it hardly retainable (hard to memorize); such as Nokia 7110, Samsung N 620. It is not only for linguistic reasons of transparency and adequation between the name and the named object, but also because of an ancestral tradition; as Arab popular imagination makes use of all its linguistic and extralinguistic resources that Arabic language and culture put in its service to nickname an object that is so close and personnal such as the mobile. Digitals are very abstract and intangible; the popular imagination prefers transparent and affective imaged names formed by the canals of metaphor and metonymy. Therefore, the names of politicians, stars, songs, places, buildings and animals are all mobilized and figuratively exploited by Arab consumers in countries like Damascus, Amman, Dubai, and Riyadh etc. to nickname this hi-tech object. Socio-cultural, psycholinguistic and commercial factors clarify the reasons of this process of socio-terminologization