Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics

Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics outlines and evaluates the major approaches and methods used in Arabic sociolinguistic research with respect to diglossia, codeswitching, language variation and attitudes and social identity. This book: outlines the main research findings in these core areas and relates them to a wide range of constructs, including social context, speech communities, prestige, power, language planning, gender and religion examines two emerging areas in Arabic sociolinguistic research, internet-mediated communication and heritage speakers, in relation to globalization, language dominance and interference and language loss and maintenance analyses the interplay between the various sociolinguistic aspects and examines the complex nature of the Arabic multidialectal, multinational, and multiethnic sociolinguistic situation. Based on the author’s recent fieldwork in several Arab countries this book is an essential resource for researchers and students of sociolinguistics, Arabic linguistics, and Arabic studies.

In this second edition of Arabic Sociolinguistics, Reem Bassiouney expands the discussion of major theoretical approaches since the publication of the book’s first edition to account for new sociolinguistic theories in Arabic contexts with up-to-date examples, data, and approaches. The second edition features revised sections on diglossia, code-switching, gender discourse, language variation, and language policy in the region while adding a chapter on critical sociolinguistics—a new framework for critiquing the scholarly practices of sociolinguistics. Bassiouney also examines the impact of politics and new media on Arabic language. Arabic Sociolinguistics continues to be a uniquely valuable resource for understanding the theoretical framework of the language.

The revised and updated edition of Modern Arabic takes this authoritative, concise linguistic description of the structure and use of modern Arabic to an invaluable new level. Clive Holes traces the development of the Arabic language from Classical Arabic, the written language used in the 7th century for the Qur'an and poetry, through the increasingly symbiotic use of Modern Standard Arabic or MSA (the language of writing and formal speech) and dialectal Arabic (the language of normal conversation). He shows how Arabic has been shaped over the centuries by migration, urbanization, and education--giving us "a balanced, dispassionate, and accurate picture of the structures, functions, and varieties of the contemporary Arabic language." Holes explains the structural characteristics--phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexical and stylistic developments--that the majority of the dialects share, as distinguished from Modern Standard Arabic. He also shows how native speakers use both types of Arabic for different purposes, with MSA being the language of power and control as used on television and in political speeches, and the dialects serving as the language of intimacy and domesticity. He further shows how MSA and spoken dialects are not as compartmentalized as one might be led to believe. Modern Arabic illustrates the use of the Arabic language in real life, whether in conversation, news bulletins and newspaper articles, serious literature, or song. This new edition takes into account research published in several areas of Arabic linguistics since the first edition was published in 1995. It includes more extensive comment on the North African Arabic vocabulary of Modern Standard Arabic, more information about "mixed" varieties of written Arabic that are not in MSA (especially in Egypt), updated references, explanations, and many new examples. All Arabic is transcribed, except for an appendix presenting the Arabic alphabet and script. Students of the Arabic language will find Modern Arabic without peer--as will those general linguists who are interested in discovering how Arabic compares structurally and sociolinguistically with European languages.

A coherent and stimulating survey of current research.

Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics outlines and evaluates the major approaches and methods used in Arabic sociolinguistic research with respect to diglossia, codeswitching, language variation and attitudes and social identity. This book: outlines the main research findings in these core areas and relates them to a wide range of constructs, including social context, speech communities, prestige, power, language planning, gender and religion examines two emerging areas in Arabic sociolinguistic research, internet-mediated communication and heritage speakers, in relation to globalization, language dominance and interference and language loss and maintenance analyses the interplay between the various sociolinguistic aspects and examines the complex nature of the Arabic multidialectal, multinational, and multiethnic sociolinguistic situation. Based on the author’s recent fieldwork in several Arab countries this book is an essential resource for researchers and students of sociolinguistics, Arabic linguistics, and Arabic studies.

Reflects on the latest trends in the study of Arabic sociolinguistics The second edition of Arabic Sociolinguistics offers an extended commentary on the important findings of new critical approaches to language and society in Arab-speaking countries. Following a recent wave of political upheavals in the Middle East, the book engages with latest academic works that relate language to power and conflict in the Arab world. In addition to thoroughly updated accounts of diglossia, code-switching, gender, language policy and language variation in the region, Reem Bassiouney discusses the most important recent development in the field - critical sociolinguistics - in a new dedicated chapter that challenges the tendency of applying Western linguistic methods and terms to superdiverse communities. By covering the key developments of linguistic theories and contexts with up-to-date examples to help explain the phenomena under discussion, this is the most comprehensive book on Arabic sociolinguistics today. Reem Bassiouney is Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo. She has eight linguistics books to her name including Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) and Functions of Code-switching in Egypt (2006). Her edited volumes include The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics (co-edited with Elabbas Benmamoun, 2018) and Identity and Dialect Performance (2017). She is also the editor and founder of the series Routledge Studies in Language and Identity and an award-winning novelist.

Arabic, Self, and Identity uses autoethnography, autobiography, and a detailed study of names to investigate the links between conflict and displacement, and between the Self and group identity.

This book offers a critical interpretation of how the meta-linguistic LPLP discourse of major Arabic language academies from the turn of the twentieth century until the present day continuously 'burden' language with extra-linguistic, sociopolitical meanings, making it a proxy for the protracted courses of national identity negotiation, counter-peripheralisation in the modern world-system and modernisation. Integrating theories of language symbolism, language indexicality, LPLP, habitus, banal nationalism, world-system and perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis, the book develops our understanding of the phenomenon and mechanism of the entanglement between language, ideology and sociopolitical change in the Arabic-speaking world and beyond.

This volume is the first of its kind to deal with the relation between Arabic and the media. It focuses on close analyses of examples of media Arabic (code-switching, language variation, orthography and constructions of identity), and also offers approaches to the use of media for teaching Arabic.

The Routledge Handbook of Arabic and Identity offers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of studies that relate the Arabic language in its entirety to identity. This handbook offers new trajectories in understanding language and identity more generally and Arabic and identity in particular. Split into three parts, covering ‘Identity and Variation’, ‘Identity and Politics’ and ‘Identity Globalisation and Diversity’, it is the first of its kind to offer such a perspective on identity, linking the social world to identity construction and including issues pertaining to our current political and social context, including Arabic in the diaspora, Arabic as a minority language, pidgin and creoles, Arabic in the global age, Arabic and new media, Arabic and political discourse. Scholars and students will find essential theories and methods that relate language to identity in this handbook. It is particularly of interest to scholars and students whose work is related to the Arab world, political science, modern political thought, Islam and social sciences including: general linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology, literature media studies and Islamic studies.