Table Of ContentTHE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
ARABIC SOCIOLINGUISTICS
The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Sociolinguistics comprises 22 chapters encompassing
various aspects in the study of Arabic dialects within their sociolinguistic context.
This is a novel volume, which not only includes the traditional topics in variationist
sociolinguistics, but also links the sociolinguistic enterprise to the history of Arabic and to
applications of sociolinguistics beyond the theoretical treatment of variation. Newly formed
trends, with an eye to future research, form the backbone of this volume.
With contributions from an international pool of researchers, this volume will be of interest
to scholars and students of Arabic sociolinguistics, as well as to linguists interested in a
concise, rounded view of the field.
Enam Al-Wer is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex.
Uri Horesh is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Essex.
THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF ARABIC
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Edited by
Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Al-Wer, Enam, editor. | Horesh, Uri, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of Arabic sociolinguistics /
edited by Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2019] | Series: Routledge
language handbooks | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019004589 | ISBN 9781138853966
(hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315722450 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Arabic language—Dialects. | Sociolinguistics—Arab
countries—Case studies.
Classification: LCC PJ6709 .R68 2019 | DDC 306.442/927—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004589
ISBN: 978-1-138-85396-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-72245-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
1 Arabic sociolinguistics: principles and epistemology 1
Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh
PART I
Historical aspects 13
2 The classification of Arabic and sociolinguistic variation in the
pre-Islamic period 15
Ahmad Al-Jallad
3 Variation in Old Arabic 30
Jonathan Owens
PART II
Dimensions of variation 45
4 Regional variation 47
William M. Cotter and Rudolf de Jong
5 Confessional varieties 63
Clive Holes
6 Style and sociolinguistics 81
Jonathan Owens
v
Contents
7 Traditional dialects 93
Bruno Herin
8 Dialect contact and urban dialects 106
Ángeles Vicente
9 Peripheral varieties 117
George Grigore
10 Arabic-based pidgins and creoles 134
Stefano Manfredi and Fida Bizri
PART III
Levels of analysis 149
11 Phonological and morphological variation 151
Aziza Al-Essa
12 Prosodic variation 169
Sam Hellmuth
13 Syntactic variation 185
Lina Choueiri
PART IV
Aspects of sociolinguistics in the Maghreb 201
14 Variation and koinéization in the Maghreb 203
Leila Messaoudi
15 Morphosyntactic variation: focus on Maltese and other western varieties 214
Maris Camilleri
16 Diglossia and the normalization of the vernacular: focus on Tunisia 227
Lotfi Sayahi
PART V
Language and ideology 241
17 Form and ideology revisited 243
Niloofar Haeri and William M. Cotter
vi
Contents
18 Ideologies in language contact situations: the case of
Arabic–Hebrew in Palestine 259
Nancy Hawker
PART VI
Applied sociolinguistics 275
19 Sociolinguistics and the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language 277
Peter Glanville
20 From an MSA-only to a fully integrated Arabic foreign language
curriculum 288
Munther Younes and Elizabeth Huntley
21 Diglossia and language development 300
Reem Khamis-Dakwar and Karen Froud
22 Language Analysis for Determination of Origin (LADO) in
Arabic-dominant settings 314
Peter L. Patrick
Index 331
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We wish to express our gratitude to all of the contributors to this volume for their generosity,
collegiality and scholarship.
A number of colleagues went above and beyond the call of duty and offered invaluable
advice throughout the preparation of the volume. In particular, we wish to thank Shahir El-
Hassan, Peter Trudgill, Clive Holes, Jonathan Owens, Mike Jones, Bruno Herin, Robert Potter
and William M. Cotter.
This project was completed during a research leave awarded to Enam Al-Wer, funded
by the Leverhulme Trust (MRF-2016–075), a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship
(pf160009) awarded to Uri Horesh and a Leverhulme/British Academy Small Research Grant
(SG160689). We thank these organisations for their support.
We are grateful to the staff at Routledge for their advice, patience and professional guidance.
A very special thanks to artist, scholar and friend Moh’d Bilbeisi, who donated the artwork
for the cover of this book. You must agree with us that his gorgeous rendition of Amman adds
life to the volume, and we are indeed very proud to have this exquisite piece adorn the cover.
Finally, we would like to express our appreciation to the generations of scholars and stu-
dents whose work has enriched the field of Arabic sociolinguistics, and the communities of
Arabic speakers worldwide, who have, unknowingly, enabled a field that tells the real story of
Arabic in its social context.
Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh
Colchester, Essex
viii
1
ARABIC SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Principles and epistemology
Enam Al-Wer and Uri Horesh
What is sociolinguistics?
Sociolinguistics is a way of doing linguistics. By this we mean articulating a theory of lan-
guage. Different schools of thought approach this enterprise through different prisms, some
through a historical lens, others through synchronic descriptions; all of these lend themselves
to theorising about how language ‘works’. In this respect, sociolinguistics endeavours to
answer the same foundational questions as other sub-disciplines, some of which are consid-
ered to be more ‘formal’. Yet by contextualising the study of language structure within the
natural habitat of language, namely human society, and doing so with novel tools, such as
quantitative analysis and advanced social scientific concepts, sociolinguistics itself is formal
in its own way.
Sociolinguistics is often defined as the study of language in its social context, though in
fact, language does not exist away from this context (Labov 1972: xiii),1 a context which
research has shown to be inherently variable. What interests sociolinguistics, however, is the
structured nature of this variation, which is a crucial component of the theory of grammar.
Additionally, language change is a natural process and the diachronic outcome of many (but
not all) instances of language variation.
Since its initial conceptualisation as an independent theory in linguistics, sociolinguistics
has expanded in various dimensions. In terms of levels of linguistic analysis, it has pioneered
the study of discourse, i.e. units of language beyond the sentence, leading to such fields of
inquiry as narrative and conversation analysis. It has also enhanced the study of language to
include thinking about the humans who produce language, and the societies in which they
interact. As such, social theories2 have proved not only useful but essential to sociolinguistic
theory. Methods of data collection have evolved in tandem with technological advances, as
well as innovations in statistical tools and the quantitative conceptualisation of such data.
Finally, linguistics at large has benefitted from sociolinguistics in that many formal linguists,
including syntacticians such as Alison Henry (e.g. Henry 1995), Andrew Radford (e.g. Rad-
ford 2018), Michael A. Jones (e.g., Jones 1993), and David Adger (e.g. Adger 2006; Adger &
Smith 2005), phonologists such as Paul Kiparsky (e.g. Kiparsky 2016) and Janet Pierrehum-
bert (e.g. Pierrehumbert 2003), have come to appreciate that variation is an important compo-
nent of the grammar of any living language.
1
