Arabic in the City

Issues in Dialect Contact and Language Variation

Catherine Miller, Enam Al-Wer, Dominique Caubet, Janet C.E. Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415762175
• eBook ISBN: 9781135978754
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifteen major Arab cities.

The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include:

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• History of settlement
• The linguistic impact of migration
• The emergence of new urban vernaculars
• Dialect convergence and divergence
• Code-switching, youth language and new urban culture
• Arabic in the Diaspora
• Arabic among non-Arab groups.

Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general.

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ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS
Development and change

Catherine Miller

1.1 Introduction

Cities are “par essence” places of contact and heterogeneity; and since the 1960s have been the locus of research on language variation and change. Most of the recent comprehensive publications on dialect contact and language variation in the urban environment focus on the Western world, i.e. on countries where the process of urbanization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was closely linked to the process of industrialization (e.g. Auer et al. 2005; Chambers et al. 2002; Kerswill 2005).

Urban sociolinguistics, and particularly variationist sociolinguistics, attempts to develop rules, models and typologies; it has turned out to be a rather challenging task due to the number and types of factors and data that need to be investigated (Owens 2005a). The link between social and linguistic processes is particularly complex. The same phenomenon (for example, migration and settlement in a given city) can produce very different linguistic outcomes depending on the historical and social settings. To what extent do the rules observed in industrialized and post-industrialized Western cities, and the socioeconomic categories developed in these countries, apply to other parts of the world? Like any other social science, urban sociolinguistics balances universalism and localism, generalization and particularism. In this respect, investigating non-Western urban settings might help to identify both universal trends and more specific local issues.

The Arabic-speaking world covers a wide and heterogeneous geographical area and includes very different types of urban settings, national constructions, social organizations and language situations, in addition to the spread of the Arabic-speaking diaspora in many parts of the world. Historically, Arab countries had experienced very different rates of urbanization. However, urbanization has been one of the important socioeconomic changes of the second part of the twentieth century. Predominantly rural in the mid-twentieth century, the population of most Arab countries is now predominantly urban (see Appendix: Table 1.1). This urban expansion co-occurred with a high demographic growth, and arose in a particular political context: the creation or the consolidation of post-colonial states leading to internal as well as external competitions and conflicts in an increasingly globalized world. Little is known about the linguistic outcomes of this massive urbanization process, although hundreds of historical and urban studies have focused on the urbanization of the Middle East (Bonine et al. 1994). For a number of cities, we find relatively old dialect descriptions, which usually fail to account for variation and change. For others, we have more focused variationist studies, restricted to a small number of phonological variables. Although valuable data have been collected for over a century, this data is often not easily accessible.¹ The absence of a synthesizing perspective does not facilitate cross-cultural comparison on the correlation between social changes and language changes.

The desire to foster dialogue between researchers from different countries and scientific traditions was at the heart of a collective project that led to the organization of an international workshop on Arabic urban vernaculars in Aix en Provence in October 2004.² From the very beginning, it was clear that the challenge of reaching a more analytic and synthetic perspective based on commonly recognized firm grounds had still a long way to go before its realization. By offering a panorama of Arabic linguistic urbanization, this book represents an initial step in this process.³ It gathers fifteen case studies on eighteen cities from ten countries (see Map 1.1). The selected cities are mainly capital cities, which have undergone different types and degrees of urbanization: old cities (Cairo and Damascus); emerging cities (Amman or Nouakchott); expanding cities (Casablanca, Riyadh, San

a and Tripoli); cities that went through civil war (Beirut); a few provincial towns (Ksar el Kebir and Meknes in Morocco; Damman, Buraidah, Abha and Skaka in Saudi Arabia); and, cities in which Arabic speakers are a political or demographic minority (Ceuta, Maiduguri, Zaragoza). The book encompasses various methodological and theoretical approaches, some more linked to Arabic dialectology, some more linked to variationist sociolinguistics and some to anthropological linguistics. The chapters present cases of dialect contact and language variation, analyzed at various linguistic levels going from an overall perspective, to phonetics and acoustic analyses. Most chapters discuss the impact of internal migration on both individual speech and on the evolution of urban vernaculars (dialect convergence or divergence); a few chapters focus on other aspects of urbanization, more linked to the spread of education, modernization and globalization. Beyond the diversity of the data, which partly reflects the past and present human and cultural diversity of these cities, some strong trends emerge that will be highlighted in the present chapter.

This chapter discusses some key aspects of Arabic urban linguistics.⁴ It analyzes the status attributed to urban vernaculars by traditional Arab grammarians and Western dialectologists vis à vis other dialectal categories (see Section 1.2). It then summarizes the main socio-economic characteristics of twentieth-century urbanization trends in the Middle East and the various linguistic impacts of this population renewal (see Section 1.3). It discusses the status of urban vernacular Arabic versus national vernacular and points to the problematic use of the concepts of standardization, prestige and norms in the Arabic setting (see Section 1.4. Finally it presents the issue of multilingualism and new urban cultures in the globalized cities (see Section 1.5). Because we subscribe to the view that language change needs to be explained on the basis of a multiplicity of factors (internal, external and extra-linguistic), particular attention will be given to extra-linguistic phenomena which play an important role in the social construct of the Middle Eastern cities. Urban dynamics cannot be isolated from their wider national or regional political context and from the ideological conflicts that arise in such contexts.

Map 1.1 Cities investigated

1.2 Classification of Arabic urban vernaculars: stereotypes and facts

Before looking at the contemporary settings, it is important to recall how the Arabic linguistic tradition, in both the Arab and Western world, has conceived the linguistic categories, which have shaped, consciously or not, our perception of the language situation. The issue of dialect categorization is closely connected to the theorization of the origin(s) of the Arabic vernaculars, a topic which has been widely discussed over the past fifty years. Only brief reference will be made here to the rural/bedouin/urban distinction, which continues to be a key and controversial classification of Arabic linguistics.

1.2.1 Traditional dialect categorizations

Arabic urban vernaculars are considered to have played a crucial role in the history of Arabic. Following the early Arab-Muslim conquest of the seventh-eighth centuries (AD), a number of garrison towns became the first Arabized centers outside the Arabian Peninsula (Donner 1981; Versteegh 1997). Because Arab speakers were in contact with local non-Arab population, the Arabic vernaculars that developed in these cities came progressively to be considered as more “corrupt” than the more “pure” bedouin vernaculars of the Arabic Peninsula. The distinction between the “conservative” Arab bedouin speech and the “corrupted” urban speech is epitomized in fourteenth century Ibn Khaldoun’s Muqaddima but can be traced back to some of the early Arab grammarians such as Ibn Jinni in the tenth century (Larcher 2006; Owens 2005b; Versteegh 1997). According to the tradition, the first Arab grammarians were called upon by the rulers to “protect” the pure Arabic language from foreign influence (Versteegh 1997: 3). They started to pinpoint the “faults” (laḥn) of the urban speakers and are said to have relied on isolated bedouin speakers to fix the grammatical rules of Classical Arabic. This topos of the purity of the bedouin language and its close relationship to Classical Arabic has survived until now in both Arab societies and the meta-linguistic discourses.

The typological division between sedentary (ḥaḍarī) and bedouin (badawī) dialects, and within the sedentary, between urban (madanī) and rural (qarawī or fellāḥī) dialects inherited from Ibn Khaldoun was taken over by the early European dialectologists and is still in use today (Palva 2006). The linguistic basis of the urban/rural/bedouin typology led to many controversies, i.e. few features distinguish all bedouin dialects from all sedentary dialects (Holes 1996; Ingham 1982). But the structural similarities recorded between dialects separated sometimes by huge geographical distances indicate that these dialectal classifications are not completely unfounded (Palva 2006; Rosenhouse 2006).

An important analytical tool of Arabic dialectology has been the concept of koine/koineization, inherited from the Hellenic linguistic tradition. It was used to explain the origin and the nature of the early urban vernaculars which developed in the garrison towns.⁵ The concepts of koine and koineization has also been applied to many urban and non-urban Arabic dialects in transitional zones or in areas that had experienced successive waves of settlement (Palva 1982). By using the term koine, linguists accredited the postulate that various Arabic vernaculars share a systemic unity between themselves and with Classical Arabic. They tended to minimize the influence of non-Arabic languages in the historical and contemporary development of Arabic vernaculars. But because the term koine has been dominantly used in reference to Arabic urban vernaculars, it reinforces the idea that urban vernaculars are more mixed than other, particularly bedouin, vernaculars, even if some postulates have since been criticized by a number of linguists (i.e. the possible unity of pre-Islamic Arabic vernaculars, the supposed conservatism of bedouin dialects, the genealogical link between Classical Arabic and modern Arabic vernaculars, etc.).⁶ In contemporary studies, the term koine refers to a shared variety (see below for Morocco).

This traditional dialect classification/representation had important repercussions for contemporary settings, both linguistically and symbolically.

1.2.2 Sociolinguistic implications of the urban/bedouin dichotomy

Linguistically, the categories of bedouin, rural and urban dialects are still used by most linguists on the basis of the presence/absence of a set of features rather than by reference to a geographical region or lifestyle. Categorizing a dialect X as a bedouin/bedouinized dialect does not mean that the speakers pursue a nomadic bedouin way of life but that they display in their speech a number of features associated with bedouin dialects. This categorization implies that some varieties spoken in urban environments will be nevertheless categorized as “bedouin-bedouinized,” “rural” or, more often, “mixed”. The implication is that “origin” (i.e. genealogy) is considered a more important criterion of categorization than “geographic location”. At this stage, it is interesting to point out that these linguistic representations echo some of the local identity discourses. Reference to “origin,” “lineage” and “family” is a corner-stone of self-affiliation discourses, particularly but not exclusively, among groups claiming an Arab tribal origin. Many urban dwellers categorize themselves by referring to a tribal-regional-family affiliation, rather than a contemporary place of residence.⁷

The continuing use of the terms rural or bedouin varieties or bedouinized koine in urban contexts can be diversely interpreted. One interpretation is that these terms refer to fixed categories and participate in the orientalist and essentialist vision of Arab societies. Another interpretation is that the use of these terms shows that there is no discontinuity between the city and the bedouin/rural hinterlands, and that urbanization does not necessarily radically transform patterns of affiliation and identification, or language use. Taking into account the theory of ethnic boundaries (Barth 1969), it is evident that the term “bedouin” may refer to very different and changing entities, the important thing being its social meanings and uses in the given society. In this respect, these categories might act as badges of identity and might be just as relevant as more “modern” categories such as social or professional classes.

The traditional dialect categorization has proved useful in identifying the various historical linguistic layers found within a city as well as in understanding the origin of communal/religious variants/varieties found in many cities. In North Africa, in particular, historical dialectology has distinguished non-Hilali from Hilali dialects and within non-Hilali, Andalusi from Jbala, etc. (Aguadé et al. 1998). In Iraq, a distinction has been drawn between sedentary qәltu dialects and bedouin gәlәt dialects (Jastrow 2006). An important correlate is that urban variants/varieties that appear at first sight to have religious or communal or sectarian affiliations (i.e. Jewish or Christian versus Muslim, or Sunni versus Shi

i) were found to reflect successive patterns of settlements and a division between former sedentary and former bedouin groups (Blanc 1964; Holes 1987, 1995b). To sum up, the population of the old urban centers spoke a sedentary vernacular, irrespective of its religious affiliation (qeltu dialect in Mesopotamia, non-Hilali and often Andalusi dialect in North Africa). With the progressive settlement of former bedouin groups, a process of koineization occurred which led to the emergence of mixed urbanized bedouinized vernaculars spoken mainly by Muslim groups (particularly males), while the old city ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Maps
• List of Tables, Figures And Spectograms
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on The Transliteration
• 1: Arabic Urban Vernaculars Development and Change
• Part I Migration, Urbanization And Language Change
• 2: The (R)Urbanization Of Mauritania Historical Context And Contemporary Developments
• 3: The Formation Of The Dialect Of Amman From Chaos To Order
• 4: Urbanization and Dialect Change The Arabic Dialect Of Tripoli (Libya)
• 5: Becoming Casablancan Fessis in Casablanca As A Case Study
• 6: Two Cases of Moroccan Arabic in The Diaspora
• Part II Urban Vernaculars: Convergence and Divergence
• 7: Greetings in Beirut Social Distribution ind Attitudes Towards Different Formulae
• 8: Linguistic Leveling in Sanani Arabic As Reflected in A Popular Radio Serial1
• 9: The Urban and Suburban Modes1 Patterns of Linguistic Variation and Change in Damascus
• 10: Segmental And Prosodic Aspects of Ksar EL Kebir’S Neo-Urban Variety
• 11: The Use of KaŠSkaŠAh/ Kaskasah and Alternative Means Among Educated Urban Saudi Speakers
• Part III Multilingualism, Codeswitching And New Urban Cultures
• 12: Close Encounters of A Different Kind Two Types of Insertion in Nigerian Arabic Codeswitching
• 13: Development and Linguistic Change in Moroccan Arabic-French Codeswitching
• 14: The Language of Cairo’S Young University Students
• 15: Rap and Rappers in Nouakchott (Mauritania)
• 16: Uses and Attitudes Towards Hassaniyya Among Nouakchott’S Negro-Mauritanian Population