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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ourooba Shetewi, Professor Karen CorriganORCiD, Professor Ghada Khattab
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Arabic diglossia, whereby Standard Arabic (SA) exists alongside numerous vernaculars, often leads to diglossic style‐shifting based on context or topic changes and is marked in the vernac‐ ular by shifting to standard linguistic features. While this phenomenon has been widely studied in the speech of educated adults, research on diglossic style‐shifting by children and adolescents has been rather limited. This paper investigates how it operates amongst 3–17‐year‐olds from a Bedouin speech community of Palestinian refugees in Syria. It examines context effects on realizations of the variables (θ) and (ð), which overlap with local realizations and (q), which has a standard realization ([q]) that is independent of dialectal variation in the community. Participants were recorded dur‐ ing sociolinguistic interviews and a picture‐naming task, the latter being expected to evoke a school setting and prompt the use of more standard realizations, signaling diglossic style‐shifting in their speech. Style‐shifting was influenced by age, context, and the linguistic variables under examination. While picture‐naming prompted greater use of standard realizations of all variables, shifting to [q] also appeared during the interview in lexical borrowings from SA, revealing topic effects on diglossic style‐shifting. Children aged 6–14 exhibited more style‐shifting in picture‐naming, likely reflecting the central role of school in their lives, while the speech of 15–17‐year‐olds contained more lexical borrowing with [q]. This likely reflects their larger linguistic repertoires and longer exposure to SA than their younger peers. These findings indicate that SA plays a key role in participants’ linguistic practices and reflect their awareness of how to employ it appropriately in their speech.
Author(s): Shetewi O, Corrigan KP, Khattab G
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Languages
Year: 2024
Volume: 9
Issue: 11
Online publication date: 30/10/2024
Acceptance date: 21/10/2024
Date deposited: 30/10/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2226-471X
Publisher: MDPI AG
URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9110341
DOI: 10.3390/languages9110341
Data Access Statement: The data presented in this study are available on reasonable request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to ethical restrictions.
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