CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 BACKGROUND
In 2009 during a summer trip to Syria, I was invited to give a seminar presentation
at a Syrian university. Because I wanted to relate to my audience and simultane-
ously present about a topic on which I was working at the time, the topic of my
presentation was the acquisition of agreement morphology in Syrian Arabic and
American English. The lecture was in the English Department and so English
was the medium of delivery. Most of the attendees were faculty and graduate
students from the same Department and the College of Humanities.
At the end of my presentation, the audience had a thirty-minute period to ask
questions about the presentation. The first question that I received was about
the rationale for choosing to study the Syrian dialect instead of Al-Fusħa (Stan-
dard Arabic). After I had explained that the Syrian dialect is acquired naturally
by Syrian children, new voices joined the discussion, which spanned the whole
thirty-minute period and revolved mainly around the topic of whether the dialects
were a topic worthy of study. The topic was continued at the end of the session
when I had an informal conversation with an old colleague and friend who was in
attendance. Our discussion started with general remarks about the presentation,
the nature of the questions asked, and research in this area. However, it shortly
turned into a deeper discussion about different issues related to the standard
and colloquial varieties of Arabic. During our conversation, I noticed that my friend
started shifting from his colloquial dialect to a high form of Standard Arabic. The
move was surprising to me, given the nature of our conversation, our relationship
as previous colleagues and friends, and the informal setting in which the conver-
sation took place. However, after the shifting recurred more than once, I noticed
that my interlocutor’s switching to Standard Arabic coincided with earnest efforts
on his part to explain, and possibly convince me of, the main point in his argu-
ment, namely, the “risks” involved in studying the dialects and “abandoning” the
Standard variety.
As I reflect on this encounter now, I realize that my friend did not merely
express his attitudinal stance on the topic verbally, but also performed it through
his codeswitching behavior. This incident initially sparked my interest in the mech-
anisms that govern codeswitching. However, as I considered the motivations,
2 Introduction

emotions, and implications involved in this sociolinguistic phenomenon, that inter-

est later developed into a broader consideration of language use and behavior
and their relationship to a host of socioaffective and sociocontextual factors.
My research in the past five years or so has focused on interdialectal
codeswitching between different Arabic varieties, particularly its sociolinguistic
and pragmatic functions, and on heritage speakers of Arabic in the United States.
Codeswitching, like any other sociolinguistic phenomenon, may not be fully
understood in isolation. In the Arab context, codeswitching is intricately related
to such issues as diglossia, identity, language attitudes, language variation and
other aspects of the broader Arab sociolinguistic situation (speakers, communi-
ties, varieties, etc.). These sociolinguistic phenomena are always changing due
to various historical, social, and political factors surrounding language use and
language ideologies in the Arab region. The emergence of new technologies is
one of the main influences on language use in many parts of the world, and the
Arabic region is no exception. Heritage speakers are removed from the Arabic
diglossic context and they diverge with respect to their facility with the Arabic lan-
guage. However, they are still subject to the same influences as their monolingual
counterparts in the Arab region. Heritage speakers display dissimilar attitudes
toward the Arabic language and its importance in their daily lives. Their language
usage is affected by the Standard–Colloquial dichotomy. Some may have strong
attachment to Arabic for cultural and religious reasons, whereas others are only
remotely related to their ancestral language and home. This variability may be
explained by social, political, and historical factors that are not very different from
those undergirding language attitudes, identity dynamics, and language use in
the Arab region.
Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics: Diglossia, Variation, Codeswitching, Attitudes
and Identity developed out of my interest in exploring the complex relationship
between these important aspects of the Arabic sociolinguistic landscape and
their individual and combined impact on the language behavior of Arabic speak-
ers. As the title suggests, this book aims to provide an up-to-date account of
these areas based on current theoretical and empirical work in the field. In this
endeavor, I also aim to establish the historical background against which these
important aspects have developed and taken their current shape. I believe that
this approach will give the reader both diachronic and synchronic perspectives on
the development and current statuses of the areas under discussion. As Heller
(1988, 1992) remarks, language behavior may not be fully understood without
considering the social and historical dimensions of the setting in which it occurs.
The book draws on the existing theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and
extensive discussions on the Arabic language, particularly the literature on Arabic
sociolinguistics. At the same time, it brings a wealth of new and unpublished data
related to the five main areas under investigation. Most of the new empirical data
used in this book comes from four field trips that I have recently made to Egypt,
Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. The purpose of these trips was to collect
firsthand and topical data necessary to answer empirical questions pertaining
 Introduction 3

to the areas under study. Six main types of data were collected during these
trips: elicited speech recordings, surveys, interviews, language–behavior obser-
vation, pictorial and textual information, and short casual ­question-and-answer
discussions. The data was collected from university students and faculty, taxi driv-
ers, passengers, passersby, shoppers and shopkeepers, hotel receptionists, and
acquaintances. In addition, I use a variety of other data sources, such as online
data and naturalistic data recordings collected during a 2009 summer business
trip to Syria. Part of the data collected from Syria has already been published, but
another part is published for the first time in this book.

1.2 THE SITUATION OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE

Arabic is a Semitic language that is spoken natively by more than 200 million
speakers in the Arab region, and it is spoken as a heritage language by several
other millions in North America, Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world. It
is the official language or one of the official languages of more than twenty coun-
tries of the Arab League, and it is one of the six official languages of the United
Nations. As the language of Islamic scholarship and liturgy, Arabic is used by mil-
lions of non-Arab Muslims who can often read it but do not have oral fluency in it.
It has an uninterrupted literary tradition that is more than fourteen hundred years
old. While the systematic study of the Arabic language is as old as the codification
of the language itself, the systematic research on the social aspects of the Arabic
language has taken form only in the past century. Modern Arabic sociolinguistic
research has been inspired by the pioneering work of the American sociolinguist
Charles A. Ferguson (1959a), who was the first contemporary scholar to provide
a formal framework describing the Arabic sociolinguistic landscape and its main
historical, social, and linguistic variables.
The Arabic sociolinguistic situation is characterized by the coexistence of two
varieties: Standard Arabic (SA) and Colloquial Arabic (QA). In this work, the term
Standard Arabic (SA) is used to refer to the variety of Arabic that is taught at
schools and has formal and official status throughout the Arab World.1 SA there-
fore covers both Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). QA,
on the other hand, refers to a number of Arabic dialects that are spoken routinely
by speakers of these dialects and do not have an official status or standardized
orthography. While SA is to some extent uniform across the Arab region, QA var-
ies across and within countries with mutual intelligibility decreasing as the geo-
graphical distance increases. In his seminal 1959 study, Ferguson described the
situation of SA and QA as a prototypical example of diglossia due to their com-
plementary distribution in terms of contexts of use. SA represents the “High” and
“superposed” variety, which is normally reserved for formal, semi-formal and liter-
ary contexts: governance, education, mass media, religious discourse, arts, formal
spoken discourse, and high culture. QA represents the “Low” and “local” vari-
ety used in conversations and other informal communicative exchanges: sports,
4 Introduction

music, film, and some TV show broadcasts. Although Ferguson’s early delineation
of diglossia has been refined in a number of subsequent works (e.g., ­Albirini,
2011; Fishman, 1971; Gumperz, 1962; Hawkins, 1983; Hudson, 2002), this
framework has remained a viable base for studying various areas in the Arabic
sociolinguistic scene.
Ferguson’s pioneering work laid the foundation for subsequent studies about
the notion of diglossia as well as the use, distribution, functions, and statuses
of SA and QA. Some of the main questions that motivated these studies were
the following: (1) are SA and QA so rigidly compartmentalized across the lines
of formality–informality that they never coexist in the same context or overlap in
terms of use, distribution, and functions, (2) what motivates speakers’ alternation
between these varieties in certain domains, and (3) how is the depiction and use
of SA and QA as High/superimposed and Low/local varieties, respectively, linked
to speakers’ language attitudes and social identities. These and similar questions
have generated much research and discussion about the issues of diglossia,
dialect use and variation, codeswitching, language attitudes and ideologies, and
identity dynamics, which became crucial for understanding the Arabic diglossic
situation and, eventually, the language behavior of Arabic speakers.

1.3 GOALS OF THE BOOK
This book revisits and expands the discussion on Arabic diglossia in conjunction
with four interrelated areas, namely, language attitudes, social identity, variation
and codeswitching. A central premise of this book is that an assessment of the
current Arabic diglossic situation requires considering the role of socioaffective
factors – i.e., language attitudes and identity sentiments – in determining the
values, roles, and distribution of the High and Low codes. Moreover, diglossia as
an active social phenomenon should be reflected in speakers’ language behavior,
which is why the study of variation and codeswitching is critical in understanding
the Arabic diglossic situation. The book brings these five topics together into
focus as a resource that serves three main goals. First, the book overviews and
evaluates the major assumptions, approaches, theories, and methodologies used
in research on diglossia, variation, codeswitching, language attitudes, and social
identity as well as the major empirical findings emerging from this research. Sec-
ond, the book offers an up-to-date account of these areas in the light of empirical
data from recent research, including research projects carried out by the author
during recent trips to the Arab region. The empirical approach to some of the
fundamental questions under the areas of interest is well-suited to reflect the
current trends in the Arabic sociolinguistic situation as perceived and enacted by
speakers of Arabic. Lastly, the book provides a new perspective on the interplay
of these sociolinguistic aspects in the language behavior of Arabic speakers as
well as their role in defining a number of related sociolinguistic issues.
The need for providing an up-to-date account of these key areas stems from
two interrelated factors. First, languages, their statuses, and their use are subject to
 Introduction 5

change over time and space in tandem with changes in social life in general. Such
a change necessitates a periodic reanalysis of language use as well as a reas-
sessment of its social, socioaffective, and sociocontextual foundations. Second,
Arabic sociolinguistics is still a developing field that is sensitive to developments
in linguistic research. Within this field of study, claims are often introduced, revised,
and countered by other researchers. The present work contributes to the ongoing
discussion on a number of major topics in Arabic sociolinguistics. In particular, the
book reexamines some of the main assumptions about the distribution of SA and
QA, their functions, and the attitudes and identity-related motives underlying their
deployment in the discursive practices of Arabic speakers. In addition, this book
discusses the relationship of these areas to some of the recent political, socio-
cultural, and ideological developments and tensions in the Arab region. By inter-
connecting the areas under study to recent political, sociocultural, and ideological
developments in the Arab region, the book seeks to shed new lights on the study
of Arabic varieties and their statuses and functions in society. Moreover, since
the examined sociolinguistic areas do not operate in isolation, the book examines
their relationships to other key issues in Arabic sociolinguistics, such as language
prestige, globalization, standardization, language planning, language maintenance,
and so on. The study of these relationships extends the scope, depth, and focus
of the book and simultaneously highlights the complex nature of the Arabic multi-
dialectal, multinational, and multiethnic sociolinguistic situation.
The book covers two areas that have so far received little scholarly attention
in the field of Arabic sociolinguistics. The first area is the virtual contact situations
created by digital media. The goal is to examine the impact of digital media on
the statuses of the Low and High varieties and speakers’ use of these varieties
in online and offline communications. The study of language use on digital media
is critical to trace any potential changes in the patterns of communication and
the distribution or functions of SA and QA in the virtual sphere. Moreover, the
study of speakers’ online language use may provide insights into speakers’ iden-
tity sentiments and their attitudes toward the language varieties to which they
are exposed in the virtual space. The second area concerns heritage speakers
as a group of Arabic-speaking individuals who are detached from the diglossic
situation of the Arab region, but are influenced by its identity dynamics and lan-
guage attitudes due to their link to their parents’ heritage language and culture.
This area is also significant for understanding the impact of the Arabic diglossic
context on speakers’ language behavior and the role of language attitudes and
identity sentiments in language use and maintenance.

1.4 OUTLINE OF THE BOOK
In addition to this introductory chapter, the book consists of nine chapters. The
second chapter provides a historical overview of the main language varieties at
play in the Arabic sociolinguistic arena, including SA, QA, Berber, English, French,
and Kurdish. The chapter also surveys the major analytical representations of
6 Introduction

Arabic diglossia and outlines the major debates concerning the distribution,
functions, and uses of SA and QA in different social contexts. This chapter also
revisits some of the controversies surrounding the labeling and grouping of dif-
ferent language varieties based on linguistic, political and geographic consider-
ations. The notion of the third/middle language (e.g., Mahmoud, 1986; Mitchell,
1982; Ryding, 1991) receives special attention because of its implications for
approaching diglossia and the other areas under investigation. The “classical”
view of diglossia as context-based (Ferguson, 1959a, 1996) is reconsidered in
the light of recent developments and research findings in Arabic sociolinguistics.
The third chapter examines the broad goals, paradigmatic assumptions,
methodologies, and techniques used in sociolinguistic research. The method-
ologies used in researching the topics of diglossia, language attitudes, social
identity, language variation, and codeswitching receive particular attention due to
their germaneness to the themes of the book. The merits and limitations of using
certain data-collection techniques in studying these subjects are evaluated. The
chapter highlights the importance of using contextually relevant analytic frame-
works and methods as well as the need for original approaches and techniques
that are informed by empirical questions or problems emanating from the Arab
context (Suleiman, 2011). The literature concerning the impact of the researcher
and his/her relationship to the participants on the outcome of sociolinguistic
research will be reviewed. This chapter concludes by explaining the research
methodology used in the book and its suitability for researching the sociolinguis-
tic constructs under study.
The fourth chapter explores the relevance of language attitudes to under-
standing the unequal statuses and functions of the language varieties at play in
the Arabic sociolinguistic landscape. In addition, the chapter examines the impact
of language attitudes on Arabic speakers’ language behavior. A distinction is
made between attitudes based on the “prestige” of particular language varieties,
the status of their speakers, and their use in certain domains. This distinction is
needed for understanding the relevant literature and explaining the discrepancy
in the findings of recent research on Arabic speakers’ attitudes toward different
language varieties, such as those related to Standard Arabic versus a particular
regional variety. Empirical data collected from 639 participants in four different
Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia) is used to explain the
complexity of language attitudes, their link to a number of sociodemographic fac-
tors, and their role in orienting speakers’ language behavior. Based on the find-
ings, it will be argued that language attitudes are shaped by both affective and
practical factors – though pragmatic considerations seem to be progressively
overshadowing the affective ones. Last, the relationship of language attitudes to
other sociolinguistic areas, such Arabicization, will be examined.
The fifth chapter overviews the concept of social identity as it relates to the
Arab context. The national, ethnic, and religious dimensions of social identity are
explored. The relationship between identity, language attitudes, and language use
is examined within the framework of existing research and is furthered based on
 Introduction 7

insights from fieldwork observations. It will be shown that identity is constructed

through forged historical narratives and negotiated discursively by speakers to
attain specific sociopragmatic goals (e.g., to maximize their benefit from social
interactions). Empirical data is used to problematize the notions of the local ver-
sus superposed varieties as conceptualized by the classical view of diglossia
and adopted widely in Arabic sociolinguistic research. In particular, the analysis
of the existing accounts of SA draws links between speakers’ identity manage-
ment techniques, their language attitudes, and their view of “classical/standard/
formal” Arabic as a superposed/local variety (in the sense of Ferguson, 1959a).
Apart from the role of historical narratives, the chapter also highlights the need
for examining identity statements and identity acts in the study of the identity
sentiments prevailing in the Arab context.
The sixth chapter focuses on variation and change in the Arabic language.
A distinction is made between region-based variation and socially motivated vari-
ation, which fall within the study of regional dialectology and social dialectology,
respectively. These two areas are theoretically distinct, but intertwined in the real
world. The chapter summarizes key developments in Arabic variationist research
and explores their historical, social, ideological, and political roots. An attempt to
disambiguate the outcome of language variation and change will always necessi-
tate investigating a host of affective, social, historical, political, and power-related
factors. Language variation and change often signify practices of linguistic con-
vergence and divergence that reflect conflicting or harmonious attitudes, social
identities, or sociopragmatic ends. Therefore, language variation is one manifes-
tation of deeper dynamics underlying the relationships among language varieties
and among their speakers. These relationships are not merely communicative,
but also historical, social, and political.
The seventh chapter examines the phenomenon of codeswitching (CS) in the
Arabic sociolinguistic situation (both bilingual and bidialectal), its historical back-
ground, and its relation to diglossia, language attitudes, and identity dynamics.
The different sociolinguistic approaches to CS are reviewed within their global
and Arab settings. Recent studies and approaches will be used to provide new
insights into the pragmatic and social functions of CS between SA and QA and
between different Arabic dialects. The findings from these studies, along with
those from the relatively older literature, will explain the complexity of this social
phenomenon, its relationship to several social factors, and the multiple motives
for language choice and switching. A distinction will be made between monitored
and unmonitored speech situations. This distinction is needed to account for the
dissimilar functions of CS in these different forms of speech. The chapter also
reports on a case study about educated Arabic speakers’ ability to sustain con-
versations in SA and the implications of their speaking skills in SA for under-
standing their ability to use SA strategically in their discourse.
The eighth chapter reviews the literature on language use on digital media,
particularly social media, as a new mode of communication. A comparison is
made between language use and choice in face-to-face interactions and online
8 Introduction

Facebook-based communication. To this end, the chapter includes a case study

focusing on Facebook users’ language practices and their utilization of SA, QA,
and English in their online activities. It will be shown that the functional distribu-
tion of SA and QA in the physical and virtual worlds is relatively similar, which
suggests that speakers somewhat replicate their face-to-face patterns of lan-
guage use when they are online. New patterns of language use and language
change, such as the increasing presence of English and Arabizi (Arabic and
English mixed), emerge, and these are explicated in the light of language atti-
tudes, identity dynamics, and the Arabic diglossic context in general. The chap-
ter explores the prospect of the spread of multilingualism as a substitute to
diglossia in the light of the increasing presence and use of English in online and
offline communication.
The ninth chapter centers mainly around the question: what language usage,
attitudinal, and identity construction patterns do we expect from speakers of Ara-
bic who are removed from the diglossic context? To this end, the chapter focuses
on heritage Arabic speakers in the United States, i.e., those who are born and
raised to Arab parents in a context where Arabic diglossia is theoretically non-
existent. This group is sociolinguistically interesting because they lack full expo-
sure to SA and QA, are removed from the diglossic context, and live in speech
communities that diverge from those inhabited by their monolingual Arab coun-
terparts. Giving the circumstances surrounding their acquisition and use of Ara-
bic, this group provides an illuminating example of the role of diglossic context
and speech community in the socially appropriate use of SA and QA. Heritage
speakers also demonstrate the importance of attitudinal and identity factors in
language maintenance.
The tenth, and final, chapter summarizes the main themes, trends, and find-
ings of the book and provides directions for future research. The chapter outlines
some of the patterns of stasis and change in the Arabic sociolinguistic situation,
and it outlines its possible trajectories based on the existing patterns.

NOTE
1 In this book, the “Arab World/Arab region” refers to the Arabic-speaking countries that
are members of the Arab League and whose main official and everyday language is
Arabic, including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauri-
tania, Morocco, Oman, State of Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia,
United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.