3.

1
Class

The first large-scale survey of language and social class was conducted in New York City by William

Labov in the early 1960s (Labov 1966). Labov was interested in pronunciation features, not grammar or

vocabulary, because he believed that pronunciation is a more fine-grained indicator of social differences.

Partly this is due to the fact that individual vowel sand consonants occur far more frequently in the flow

of speech than do particular grammatical constructions or words (indeed, we can’t say anything at all

without them). Labov argued that it was important to obtain a representative sample of speakers from the

town or city under investigation, in order to be sure of revealing any systematic relationships between the

use of language and social factors, particularly class, gender and ethnicity. He also devised the

sociolinguistic interview, incorporating sections where the interviewee will be as relaxed as possible and

others where they are asked to read sentences and word lists, forcing them to pay attention to their speech

as much as possible. He termed these styles.

3.2

Ethnicity

In Britain, the investigation of language and ethnicity has tended to focus on working-class young people

living in the inner city, and to take much greater care in creating more natural contexts for the recordings.

The first large-scale study was that by Viv Edwards (1986), who recorded young people of Jamaican

descent in Dudley in the West Midlands. At that time, a form of Jamaican creole, locally known as Patois,

was used by many of the Afro-Caribbean population, including those born in Britain. Edwards expanded

Labov’s and Trudgill’s interview design by having people speak in a group rather than on their own, and

by varying the interviewer by age (young or older) and ethnicity (black or white).
The role of geographic location in
linguistic diversity and the
development of regional dialects has
always been a
recurrent topic in sociolinguistic
studies. For years, it was believed that
geographic location or distance had a
considerable effect on the way people
use language and hence the emergence
of regional dialects (Holmes, 2008;
Wardhaugh, 2006; Wardhaugh &
Fuller, 2015). These studies and the
like are now referred to as research
traditions in sociolinguistics. With the
emergence of globalization and the
development of unprecedented
communication channels between
people, different studies have come to
raise doubts in relation to the effect of
geographic location on linguistic
diversity. The main argument is that
geographic location has no connection
with language variation (Auer, 2013;
Auer & Schmidt, 2010; Beal, 2010).
In the face of this, this article
investigates the role of geographic
location on language use in Egyptian
and Saudi Arabic. The study is based
on
a corpus of colloquial spoken
Egyptian and Saudi Arabic. Data is
abstracted from two radio shows.
These are (1)
the Egyptian radio show Ish Sabahak
(Live Your Morning) on Nogoum FM
Radio Channel and (2) the Saudi
radio show Caffeine on Mix FM.
Geographic Location

The role of geographic location in linguistic diversity and the development of regional dialects has always

been a recurrent topic in sociolinguistic studies. For years, it was believed that geographic location or

distance had a considerable effect on the way people use language and hence the emergence of regional

dialects (Holmes, 2008; Wardhaugh, 2006; Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2015). These studies and the like are

now referred to as research traditions in sociolinguistics. With the emergence of globalization and the

development of unprecedented communication channels between people, different studies have come to

raise doubts in relation to the effect of geographic location on linguistic diversity. The main argument is

that geographic location has no connection with language variation (Auer, 2013; Auer & Schmidt, 2010;

Beal, 2010). In the face of this, this article investigates the role of geographic location on language use in

Egyptian and Saudi Arabic. The study is based on a corpus of colloquial spoken Egyptian and Saudi

Arabic. Data is abstracted from two radio shows. These are (1) the Egyptian radio show Ish Sabahak

(Live Your Morning) on Nogoum FM Radio Channel and (2) the Saudi radio show Caffeine on Mix FM.

Numerous studies have been concerned with the relationship between geographic location and linguistic

diversity. This is usually referred to in the literature as regional variation linguistics, a subdiscipline

within sociolinguistics (Beal, 2010; Hargraves, 2003; Hughes, & McArthur, 2002; Peters, 2007; Trudgill

& Hannah, 2008; Trudgill, & Watt, 2015). The main argument of these studies indicates that there are

significant linguistic differences within languages in general and that geographic location or space plays
an important role in linguistic diversity. Some studies even go beyond indicating that in spite of

globalization and the increasing advancement in telecommunication tools, features of dialect are still clear

markers of regional and local identity (Beal, 2010). According to Trousdale (2010), all languages have

dialectical variations. These variations, or dialects, can differ in phonology, morphology, spelling,

vocabulary, and/or syntax from the standard language that many people often think of wrongly as the

“correct” language. He asserts that geographic background has a significant role in linguistic diversity. In

the same way, Syal & Jindal (2007) argue that languages vary from one place to another where speakers

of the same language use it differently based on the place where they live. Beal (2010) agrees that

geographic location leads to the emergence of dialectal variations within a language. These variations,

however, are governed by mutual intelligibility where speakers of a language can understand each other.

The study of language variation, or what is technically referred to as dialects, is the concern of

dialectology, a discipline in sociolinguistics. The emergence of dialects or language variation can be

attributed to some primary factors. These include geographic location, class, education, occupation,

ethnicity, sex, and age (Matras, 2009; Wardhaugh, 2006). This article, however, is concerned with

regional differences in relation to spoken Arabic. To put it into effect, the study investigates the

differences between Egyptian and Saudi Arabic concerning the use of intensifiers. In regional variation,

the assumption is that there is a connection between language and space or location. Numerous studies

have indicated that geographic location plays an essential role in language variation and the emergence of

dialects. That is, when speakers of the same group are geographically apart, it is more likely that they use

language differently. In England, for instance, geographic location is an important element in identifying

the dialects that are spoken over the country. English speakers in the North East, for instance, pronounce

bus as /bus/, which is different from RP. It is also claimed that space and location have been essential in

the emergence of a new variety of English that came to be known as General American English which is

different from the UK varieties. Historically, when people moved from England to America, they brought

their language with them. However, for contact and communication reasons, the English they used to

speak began to change in different ways. One main change was the adoption of local forms on the level of
vocabulary and the takeover of lexemes from other languages. Increasingly, American English as a

language drew on its own resources and became less and less dependent on the English motherland

(Algeo, 2010). Today there are so many differences between British and American English. It is always

said: “two nations divided by a common language”, a saying which is attributed to many including Dylan

Thomas, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. The implication is that barriers of

geographic location become linguistic barriers. The emergence of linguistic differences due to time and

distance relation is referred to in the literature as “contagious diffusion” (Wolfram & Schilling, 2016, p.

144). The implication here is that the emergence of dialectal variations is bound to the movement of a

language from one place to another. In our case, Arabic moved from Arabia to Egypt and this movement

has brought about different linguistic differences.

The diversity found across the world’s languages today is not the same as it was a hundred or 10,000

years ago, nor will it stay the same in the future. As the processes of diversification need time to run their

course, we often find more diversity in areas where a language has been used for longer—compare, for

example, English in the United Kingdom with English in Australia [1]. On top of this temporal

dimension, we also see that linguistic diversity increases over geographical distance. Several patterns of

linguistic diversity have been shown to exist, ranging from gradually accumulating differences [2], to

more burst-like diversification [3]. The specific role that the geographical configuration of a language

area plays in this process is less explored. The current study aims to investigate to what extent a cultural

process such as language diversification follows the same patterns as a biological diversification. To do

this, we investigate patterns of linguistic diversity in the context of an island setting by applying insights

from population genetics.

There are two notions from population genetics that we investigate in detail here. First we consider

dispersal, which is defined as any movement that has the potential to affect gene flow, i.e. the transfer of

genes between populations [4]. If dispersal can occur without restriction, genes are transferred across all
populations and we find evenly-spread genetic variation and high levels of homogeneity [ 5]. However,

the physical characteristics of the individual put a limit on its dispersal range and this reduces gene flow

between distant populations. With this reduced gene flow, genetic differentiation between populations

will increase and the end result is increased diversification over geographic distance; a pattern that has

been dubbed isolation-by-distance [6].

The same idea can be applied to language. Speakers adapt their speech patterns to accommodate to their

most common conversational partners, their speech community [7]. The use of language in human

interaction can be thought of as linguistic gene flow. This interaction will, for logistical reasons, be more

intense between people that are close to each other: linguistic features first spread across communities

that share dense interaction, and then expand into the rest of a language area—a process called diffusion

([8], for an overview). As a result, the language of neighbouring communities will differ only slightly [9].

However, contact between geographically distant communities will be less frequent and accommodation

will occur to a lesser degree. This limited linguistic gene flow over increasing geographic distance means

that speech communities will resemble each other less and less the farther apart they are [2]—the

isolation-by-distance pattern described above. Linguists often call this a dialect continuum and it has been

shown to hold over several language areas. Nerbonne [10] investigated language varieties in six areas

(Bantu, Bulgaria, Germany, US East Coast, the Netherlands, and Norway), and found linguistic diversity

increased over geographic distance.

The role of geographic location in

linguistic diversity and the
development of regional dialects has
always been a
recurrent topic in sociolinguistic
studies. For years, it was believed that
geographic location or distance had a
considerable effect on the way people
use language and hence the emergence
of regional dialects (Holmes, 2008;
Wardhaugh, 2006; Wardhaugh &
Fuller, 2015). These studies and the
like are now referred to as research
traditions in sociolinguistics. With the
emergence of globalization and the
development of unprecedented
communication channels between
people, different studies have come to
raise doubts in relation to the effect of
geographic location on linguistic
diversity. The main argument is that
geographic location has no connection
with language variation (Auer, 2013;
Auer & Schmidt, 2010; Beal, 2010).
In the face of this, this article
investigates the role of geographic
location on language use in Egyptian
and Saudi Arabic. The study is based
on
a corpus of colloquial spoken
Egyptian and Saudi Arabic. Data is
abstracted from two radio shows.
These are (1)
the Egyptian radio show Ish Sabahak
(Live Your Morning) on Nogoum FM
Radio Channel and (2) the Saudi
radio show Caffeine on Mix FM.
The role of geographic location in
linguistic diversity and the
development of regional dialects has
always been a
recurrent topic in sociolinguistic
studies. For years, it was believed that
geographic location or distance had a
considerable effect on the way people
use language and hence the emergence
of regional dialects (Holmes, 2008;
Wardhaugh, 2006; Wardhaugh &
Fuller, 2015). These studies and the
like are now referred to as research
traditions in sociolinguistics. With the
emergence of globalization and the
development of unprecedented
communication channels between
people, different studies have come to
raise doubts in relation to the effect of
geographic location on linguistic
diversity. The main argument is that
geographic location has no connection
with language variation (Auer, 2013;
Auer & Schmidt, 2010; Beal, 2010).
In the face of this, this article
investigates the role of geographic
location on language use in Egyptian
and Saudi Arabic. The study is based
on
a corpus of colloquial spoken
Egyptian and Saudi Arabic. Data is
abstracted from two radio shows.
These are (1)
the Egyptian radio show Ish Sabahak
(Live Your Morning) on Nogoum FM
Radio Channel and (2) the Saudi
radio show Caffeine on Mix FM.
The role of geographic location in
linguistic diversity and the
development of regional dialects has
always been a
recurrent topic in sociolinguistic
studies. For years, it was believed that
geographic location or distance had a
considerable effect on the way people
use language and hence the emergence
of regional dialects (Holmes, 2008;
Wardhaugh, 2006; Wardhaugh &
Fuller, 2015). These studies and the
like are now referred to as research
traditions in sociolinguistics. With the
emergence of globalization and the
development of unprecedented
communication channels between
people, different studies have come to
raise doubts in relation to the effect of
geographic location on linguistic
diversity. The main argument is that
geographic location has no connection
with language variation (Auer, 2013;
Auer & Schmidt, 2010; Beal, 2010).
In the face of this, this article
investigates the role of geographic
location on language use in Egyptian
and Saudi Arabic. The study is based
on
a corpus of colloquial spoken
Egyptian and Saudi Arabic. Data is
abstracted from two radio shows.
These are (1)
the Egyptian radio show Ish Sabahak
(Live Your Morning) on Nogoum FM
Radio Channel and (2) the Saudi
radio show Caffeine on Mix FM.