Chapter 14

Technological context

This study investigated the impact of technological devices on Kuwaiti youths as creators of a technological context with its own pragmatic parameters. To the youth, a parallel communicative world is in action when they engage in any communicative repertoire using mobile devices. I conducted a survey at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait to investigate the existence of such a contextual realm and whether it has its own regulatory factors. A majority of my respondents emphasized that when talking with any person using a mobile device, they are indeed engaged in a communicative environment, the context of which has its own regulatory parameters, such as emoticons, pictures, sound files, text files, tweets, and so on. A majority of the respondents insisted that they feel more secure when using their mobile devices, implying that they become different individuals when doing so, and that this sudden role change occurs due to the contextual environment in which they are engaged. This study emphasizes that the technological context is the product of instant collaboration between two or more communicators in a real-time situation. I argue that technological meanings are produced solely in a technological context and, thus, their facilitating environments differ from those found in the real world.