Arabization strategies of foreign lexical items in Arabic digital media: A corpus-based analysis of linguistic identity

This study investigates strategies of Arabizing foreign vocabulary in Arabic digital media through a corpus-based linguistic analysis of contemporary media discourse. It examines how foreign lexical items entering Arabic media in the context of globalization and digital transformation are processed through different strategies, including direct borrowing, phonological adaptation, semantic translation, and lexical creation. The aim of the study is to identify the most frequently used Arabization strategies in Arabic digital media and to evaluate their relationship with Arabic linguistic identity. The research adopts a descriptive-analytical approach based on corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. The data consist of 20 video-based media texts collected from four major Arabic media institutions, namely Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia, and Asharq News, published between 2024 and 2025. From these texts, 100 foreign lexical items were extracted and systematically analyzed. The analytical framework integrates Haugen’s (1950) model of loanword integration and Backus’s (2001) distinction between loan translation and code-switching, providing a structured classification of Arabization strategies. The findings indicate that semantic translation is the dominant Arabization strategy, followed by lexical creation, direct borrowing, and phonological adaptation. These findings suggest that Arabic digital media generally prefers established Arabic equivalents whenever available, while direct borrowing remains common for internationally recognized technological terminology.