The Arabic Language

ninsu
‘we forget’ to urban 
ninsāw
, which is even farther 
from Standard Arabic 
nansā
. The results of both Al Wer and Gibson demonstrate 
that linguistic change in spoken speech does not (always) go into the direction of 
Classical Arabic. Yet the influence of the standard language may well be visible in 
other domains than everyday colloquial speech, for instance, in public speaking, 
as we have seen above (pp. 246ff.). This means that Standard Arabic retains a 
certain role in upgrading processes, as in the case of Bahrain.
Religious affiliation has long been known to be an important factor in language 
variation in Arabic. In his classic work on the correlation between religious affilia-
tion and dialect variety in Baghdad, Blanc (1964) described the communal dialects 
of Muslims, Christians and Jews. More recently, Holes (1987) has analysed the 
communal varieties in Bahrain, where a Sunnite Bedouin dialect represents the 
standard variety, whereas the Shiʿite minority, the Baḥārna, speak a sedentary 
dialect. Holes emphasises the different social meanings which variants obtain 
in this community (see also Holes 1995b), and rightly assumes that an adequate 
account of the sociolinguistic situation should include the entire range of styles 
that people have at their disposal. In his survey he arrives at the relevant variables 
by setting up implicational scales, that is, by observing the co-occurrence of 
certain variants in the speech of his respondents. The most important outcome of 
his analysis is the interdependence between linguistic form and social meaning. 
This is especially manifest in those cases where Baḥārna forms agree or disagree 

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255
with the Standard Arabic form. In the case of the word for ‘fish’ (Standard Arabic 
samaka
), both Baḥārna and Sunnites have 
smiča
; accordingly, when upgrading 
their speech they will turn both to the Standard Arabic form. In the case of the 
word for ‘sunset’ (Standard Arabic 
maġrib
), the Baḥārna have 
maġrib
, while the 
Sunnites say 
mġarb
; in this case, Baḥārna literates tend to switch to the Sunnite 
form, whereas the Sunnites upgrade by turning to the Standard Arabic form 
(Holes 1987: 170ff.).
A third intrapersonal variable is that of gender. The study of male–female 
speech variation has become increasingly popular in Arabic sociolinguistics. In 
Western sociolinguistics, there is a generally accepted dictum that on average 
women tend to conform to standard/prestige variants more than men, and that 
they are more conservative with regard to linguistic change. This rule has been 
called into question for non-Western societies, where some claim that men tend 
to use the standard variants more than women. Actually, it is not always true 
that women use less Modern Standard Arabic than men, but this depends on the 
context. Bassiouney (2009b: 162–85) studied the use of Arabic in television talk 
shows with male and female participants, and she found that in such a competi
-
tive context women use just as much Modern Standard Arabic as men do, possibly 
even more, because of its association with expertise and authority. In this context 
the language use serves to assert one’s authority. Parkinson (2003) found that 
when knowledge of 
fuṣḥā 
was tested formally, women scored higher than men. 
These results are more in line with the pattern in Western countries.
Perhaps a better way to formulate this tendency is by concluding that both 
men and women tend to veer towards a prestige variety, but they sometimes 
differ as to which prestige variety they select. One of the examples mentioned 
by Bassiouney (2009a) is that of gender-related variation in Damascus, which 
was investigated by Daher (1997). Men prefer /q/, but women prefer /ʾ/. Daher 
explains this by pointing out that /q/ as the Standard Arabic realisation belongs 
to the realm of education, which traditionally is a male domain. The women’s 
choice of /ʾ/ may be explained by the fact that it stands for urbanisation and 
modernisation. A similar case of gender-related variation is that of the female 
Jordanian students whose speech was studied by Suleiman (1985: 45). They switch 
from rural to urban dialect varieties to a much larger degree than male students. 
Yet men tend to use more Standard Arabic, which is the variety for public appear
-
ances, in which women participate less than men. We have seen above that the 
higher educated women from Sult in Al Wer’s study (2002) preferred the urban 
variants of Amman. The contrast between Western and non-Western speech 
patterns disappears when we realise that the standard variety should not be 
identified automatically with Modern Standard Arabic. In the case of the Jorda-
nian students, it is the urban dialect that is regarded by most speakers as the 
prestige variety. Modern Standard Arabic, on the other hand, has a prestige of its 
own, but is seen as part of the male domain.

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256
The Arabic Language
Gender-related variation is often combined with other variables, for instance, 
social class and age. In her study of male and female speech in Cairo, Haeri (1996) 
observed that strong pharyngalisation is associated with the speech of lower-class 
men, and avoided by women. Yet one finds that some women adopt this feature 
in order to project a certain image: the stereotypical 
baladi 
woman may be heard 
to use strong pharyngals in line with her image as an independent, self-sufficient 
personality.
An interesting case study showing the relation between gender and other 
variables is Walters’ (1991) extensive survey of linguistic variation in the small 
town of Korba in Tunisia. One of the variants he investigated is that of final /-ā/, 
which in Tunisian Arabic becomes [ɛː] by 
ʾimāla
. In the dialect of Korba, this variable 
is realised by three variants: the standard variant [ɛː], and two raised variants, [ɪː] 
and [ɨː], which are regarded by the speakers as local and non-prestigious. Walters 
shows that the Tunisian standard variant is used most by young male speakers, 
followed by young females, then older males and then older females. His results 
are important for several reasons. In the first place, they demonstrate that the use 
of the standard variant correlates with a combination of gender, age and educa
-
tion rather than gender alone: those female speakers who used the variant [ɛː] 
had studied in Tunis. In the second place, most young speakers, both male and 
female, still use the raised variants with some speakers when they are back in the 
village, thus showing that these variants have become a marker of group identity.
In the dialect of Korba, age plays an important role in the patterns of language 
choice. As an independent variable, however, age remains an understudied topic 
in Arabic sociolinguistics, and most studies on youth language remain impression
-
istic and focus on lexical items. Presumably, processes of urbanisation lead to the 
kind of speech community in which young speakers may congregate and develop 
their own style of speaking and their own specific youth culture. In the age of 
social media, such in-group markers stand a much greater chance of spreading, 
not only in the in-group, but also in society at large. Typical teenager expressions 
quickly find their way to the general public (and are then, of course, replaced by 
newer expressions in teenage in-group culture). In Egyptian Arabic, words like 
riwiš 
‘cool’, 
ṭaḥn 
‘extremely’
 
and 
ʾišṭa 
‘good, fine’, which used to be limited to youth 
language and are still regarded as typical of their jargon (Rizk 2007), have become 
common expressions. A particularly apt example is the comment by middle-aged 
fans, who regard Amr Khaled’s sermons as 
riwiš
(above, p. 252).