Men as Leaders of Linguistic Change: Case of Tlemcen Speech Community (original) (raw)
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Sociolinguistic variation in an Arabic speech community: Tlemcen
Cahiers de Dialectologie et de Linguistique Contrastive, 1994
The present paper attempts to look at sociolinguistic variation in an Algerian urban context, Tlemcen, a big town where the linguistic situation is very complex. Indeed, a significant heterogeneity can readily be observed in the speech community, as, in addition to the phenomena resulting from bilingualism and diglossia, two Arabic dialectal forms co-exist in Tlemcen in a tight network of linguistic interference in everyday speech interaction. By means of empirical data, collected in spontaneous day-to-day speech interactions, we have tried to show the extent to which the glottal stop, a phonological feature specific to Tlemcen speech, is increasingly avoided by native speakers and, in particular, to identify the reasons why males are much more influenced by rural Arabic forms than non-native people by Tlemcen Arabic, while female speakers are in general more conservative.
Urbanization and the Development of Gender in Arabic
This article makes the claim that the difference between Bedouin and urban dialects of Arabic in gender representation in the plural is a function of the urbanization process the urban dialects of Arabic went through in the 7 th century in the conquered territories. Contact-induced linguistic processes of koineization and structural simplification in the newly established urban centers in the Middle East and North Africa helped enhance the gender development that was already in effect before the Arab conquests. By comparing Bedouin and urban dialects to Classical Arabic, the article establishes that the three varieties were in a process of development in gender. Classical Arabic stopped at a particular stage, and Bedouin and urban dialects continued. Comparing Central Asian dialects to urban dialects of Egypt we can see that at least to the 8 th century gender was a common feature of Peninsular dialects. The article concludes by stating that the urban dialects developed further to lose all gender distinction in the plural because of the leveling and borrowing processes of the koineization in the urban centers in their formative period. . Through contact processes of leveling and regularization took place, rendering different koines in different garrison towns because the tribes that participated in the population of each garrison differed. After the conquests proved lucrative, the financial benefits of living in the garrison towns became obvious, and the commercial and agricultural conditions in the provinces worsened, sectors of the monolingual local populations migrated to the vicinity of the booming garrison towns. Due to an imbalance of prestige and wealth, the language of the job givers and wealth owners, Arabic, was chosen to be the language of communication between both groups. Because learning Arabic was informal and the desire to communicate was mutual, Arabs used simplification strategies to make their language more accessible to non-Arab learners. Structural differences between the old peninsular dialects and those of the New Arabic type of the language that was used in the garrison towns, therefore, can be ascribed to the effect of these two contact strategies, koineization and simplification.
The Socio-phonetics and Morphosyntax of Language Variation in Jordan
The Socio-phonetics and Morphosyntax of Language Variation in Jordan, 2021
This study investigates the linguistic choices made by the participants at the level of phonetics and morphosyntax in Irbid city. The study examines the way speakers reconstruct their new identity, as belonging to an upper social class rather than to their real middle class. The researcher assumed that he would find a lot of variation among the speakers in this city that is worth examining socio-linguistically, especially that Irbid is rich in linguistic variation and social contact. The data were extracted from the videos of ten field interviews. The researcher found that gender, age and education influence the way people speak. That is to say, the young people (both males and females) were more triggered to make linguistic changes than their aged counterparts. Besides, the females produced more vernacular variants than the males. This research attempts to investigate social class as an attraction, to which the speaker tries to reach, pushing him/her to make linguistic changes, rather than as a social factor affecting the speaker"s choices since this study assumes that the speaker makes linguistic changes as he/she reconstructs his/her identity in the new social class (the attraction or target). The study concludes that social class, in particular, serves as a motivation factor that pushes speakers to reformulate their identity.
Evidence of Variable Gender Role in Defining Language Change Leadership in Syrian Arabic
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) , 2022
This study aims to present evidence of gender variability among leaders of language change across different sociolinguistic variables, five phonological variables (a consonant and four vowels) and a discourse variable in Syrian Arabic, within the same speech community. Employing a sociolinguistic variationist approach and comparing children to adults yielded different gendered linguistic behavior. Children show the same dramatic gendered linguistic difference as adults regarding the variable (q), with males using much more rural [q] than urban [ʔ] than females. Regarding the vowel variables, children dramatize their gendered linguistic difference much more than adults; boys show much higher use of the rural vowels than girls compared to the difference between men and women. This pattern is reversed in the discourse variable (yaʕni) 'that is/I mean'; the gendered linguistic difference is more dramatic among adults than it is among children, and gender effect diminishes in the linguistic distribution of the variable. This multidirectionality in gender effects bears implications for sociolinguistic variationist research. Variables indexed to urban refinement/prestige and social meanings such as femininity/masculinity are more likely to be led by females than males. Conversely, variables that lack these types of social/gender identification indexicality, regardless of whether they are phonological or discursive, do not follow the same pattern of leadership.
Child Dialect Variation and Change: Case of Amman Speech Community, Jordan
Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literatures, 2020
This paper investigates variation in the speech of Jordanian children in addition to its social and psychological motivations and outcomes. The data is collected via the task of naming images accompanied with field observation. The sample involves 29 participants aged between 5 and 13 stratified according to their gender. The study examines the dialectal realizations of qāf including the urban [ʔ], the rural [g], and the standard [q] in the performance of children. The results of the present research show that child language variation and mixing is not only developmental but also socially governed. Acquiring and performing one`s gender identity appears to be an important factor in shifting along with developing a bi-dialectal competence and social consciousness. All these motivations bring the outcome that children are participating in the process of accommodation and,therefore, are enhancing dialect change in Jordanian Arabic.
Gender and Phonological Variation in Cairene Arabic
2020
Gender in relation to social class and language variation among different speech communities has attracted a great deal of research. Language use by men and women often reflects gender exclusive roles, social status and power. If their social roles overlap, their use of speech forms overlaps by producing different quantities or frequencies of the same speech form. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of gender in the production of variants of the long vowel /aa/, /ee/, /ɑɑ/ among the lower working (LWC) in the Cairene speech community. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 24 informants. Five jurists completed a forced choice to judge the vowel length of the long vowel /aa/, /ee/, / ɑɑ/. Results of the Z-test confirm that LWC women use the extra-long variants [aa:], [ee:] and [ɑɑ:] significantly more than the LWC men. Using the stigmatized extra-lengthened forms by women is considered a sign of showing solidarity with members of their local community and of construc...
Probing linguistic change in Arabic vernaculars: A sociohistorical perspective
Language in Society, 2020
It is received wisdom in variationist sociolinguistics that linguistic and social factors go hand in hand in structuring variability in language and any consequent instances of language change. We address the complexity of such factors by exploring data from several Arabic dialects in the eastern Arab World. We demonstrate that language change does not always follow expected phonological trajectories, even in cases where older changes are reconstructed to have operated along so-called universal patterns. In our explanation of recent changes in these dialects, we emphasise the role of social motivations for language change and the interactions between these social constraints and purely linguistic ones. Our analysis of change is supported by historical accounts of variation and change in Arabic. We illustrate how general principles of sociolinguistic theory apply to the Arabic data and provide additional layers of sociolinguistic information that highlight the importance of diverse data for evaluating cross-linguistic generalisations.
Traduction et Langues , 2006
Cet article traite d'un aspect intéressant de l'identité, à savoir celui de l'identité des femmes et des hommes à travers la phonologie et la grammaire. L'utilisation d'un style spécifique au sexe reflète son image sociale. Cela signifie que le style spécifique au genre est limité par les normes sociales. Il peut être utilisé comme une stratégie pour atteindre certains objectifs. D'une autre manière, on peut dire que le style spécifique au genre signale une identité sociale. Pour signaler leur identité sociale, les hommes et les femmes sont susceptibles de se référer à des formules de style spécifiques afin d'expliciter leurs actes de langage. Il est indéniable que le discours des femmes dénote une infériorité, moins de confiance et d'insécurité. Les femmes sont enclines à utiliser tout ce qui est dans la communication verbale et non verbale, elles sont assez « sélectives » quant à leur style de langage car elles ont tendance à être prestigieuses. Leurs modèles de discours apparemment très prudents par rapport aux modèles des hommes. Cela dit que le sexe du locuteur le contraint à utiliser un style définissant le sexe. Ainsi, le choix d'un style spécifique est progressivement limité par un certain nombre de contraintes qui régissent le comportement des hommes comme des femmes.