Proposal_for_Essay_Guru_Only
Arabic dialect attitudes: Saudi Arabia.
Introduction
As Garrett (2010) states, the way we speak conveys many attitudes about who we are, our social status, group affiliation, identity, and so on. Individuals may choose a way of speaking based on what attitude they want to pass on to their interlocutors. This could be on the level of individuals or communities (Ven Herk 2012). Many studies were conducted to assess attitudes towards varieties of different languages. In England, for example, Coupland and Hywel (2007) assessed the attitudes of 5010 participants about 34 British accents on social attractiveness and prestige. They found that accents associated with standardness were generally evaluated higher for prestige and social attractiveness while different urban vernaculars had different evaluation levels. In accordance with many other attitude studies (Gales 1970; McKenzie 2008; Lindmann 2003; Hiraga 2005), Coupland and Hywel (2007), stratified their results according to gender and age which yielded significant differences. For this study, I propose investigating attitudes towards dialects of Arabic in Saudi, namely: that of Riyadh, Qassim and Jeddah.
Literature review
Saudi Arabia in its current modern state has only existed for 80 years (FRD, 2006). Before that, people mostly lived within their tribes with limited social contact with other tribes. Gradually, urbanisation and modernisation took place; people started moving to bigger cities to benefit from the economic opportunities offered there (FRD, 2006). This provided a rich environment for social contact creating a rather complex sociolinguistic community. This process results in the standardisation of the dialects of those big cities (Abu-Haidar 1989). Al-Rojaie (2013) claims that such a process is now occurring in the case of the dialect spoken in Riyadh In addition, the fact that men and women interaction undergoes separation in Saudi Arabia adds to the uniqueness of this social context.
There has been very little recent work done on dialectal variation in Saudi Arabia. The most comprehensive work is that of Prochazka (1988) titled : ‘Saudi Arabian dialects’. A more recent study is presented by Bruce Ingham (1994) which had Najdi Arabic (spoken mainly in central Arabia) as its focus. Both studies use names of tribes and regions as titles of some the dialects they study such as ‘Harb’ (Ingham 1994) and ‘Tohama, (Prochazka 1988). For the purposes of this study and for participants to be able to reflect on more empirical observations, names of cities will be used to indicate the dialects spoken in those cities rather than names of tribes.
Ideally, this study would include all the possible Saudi dialects to account for all the possible attitudes. However due to restrictions imposed by the time available, I propose to include dialects from Al Qassim, Riyadh, and Jeddah also include a guise made by an Arabic professor to present the standard Arabic. Al Qassim and Jeddah are chosen due to the different and opposing attitudes being attached to them; Al Qassim being conservative (Burke 2011), and Jeddah being rather liberal (Al-Essa 2009). The choice to include riyadh is due to the city’s status in the kingdom. It has been suggested that the dialect of Riyadh may have become the new standard Arabic dialect in Saudi due to its economic power, increasing population and political dominance (Al-Rojaie 2013). Similarly, it should be interesting to examine the attitudes towards modern standard Arabic.
Both dialects spoken in Al Qassim and Riyadh are varieties of Najdi Arabic as described by Johnstone (1963), Prochazka (1988), Ingham (1994). Even though these dialects are now spoken by the sedentary population (Al-Rojaie 2013), referred to by locals as (hadar), they are classified by the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (2006) as Bedouin. The dialect of Jeddah, however, is linguistically classified as sedentary ( Al-Essa 2009). Probably the most described linguistic feature is the affrication of /k/ (Holes 1991, Ingham 1994, Al-Azraqi 2007, Al-Essa 2009). As this feature used to exist in all varieties of Najdi Arabic, it is now only existent in the dialect of Al Qassim. Most of the inhabitants of Najd (central Arabia where Riyadh and Al Qassim is located) come from tribal descent. Unlike Jeddah, where most of its population come from non tribal (urban) decent.
Methodology
Considering that the study is aimed at finding out about the attitudes, data are to be collected using a form of the matched guise technique. This will be conducted through recording the four main guises with additional four as diversions. The main guises will all be educated, and of a similar age. In the form of passage reading, each guise will be asked to read a piece of text describing a particular type of tree or animal. This is to limit the perceptions the participants might have about the content of the text itself and base their attitudes on the accents only. The researcher will work with the guises to produce recordings which are clear of paralinguistic features that may trigger certain attitudes themselves. In addition, the researcher will insure that each participant performs a sufficient representation of the accent in question. Final versions of each recording should be no more than 1 minute.
After the recording is completed, the researcher will assemble at least two focus groups of different ages to account for the possible differences in age. These groups will have brainstorming sessions with the aid of the recorded guises to reach a list of features and questions to be added to the questionnaire. The researcher will use examples from previous studies as a stimulus in order to help the group participants to have a better idea of the nature of the study. A strong emphasis will be put on features that are particular to the Saudi socity. The results of these focus groups will determine the content of the questionnaire.
The questionnaire will be paper based. Questions will be in two forms, the first one is a seven scale rating of each recording incorporating terms such as honest, authentic, pleasing and etc, the second form is asking the participants to rate the guise who would be best as working a certain job or doing a particular form of work such as being a teacher, a preacher or who would do best in a job interview etc. Each form will ask participants to write their age, level of education and where they live and have lived for at least the past five years. This is to insure that participants come from the cities in which they are being questioned.
The participants for the questionnaire will be of two age groups, the first is less than 35 and the second is higher. Participants for the first group are to be found in university classes in Saudi Arabia taking summer courses. Hopefully with the cooperation of my home university back in Saudi Arabia, I will be able to get responses. Respondents will be from Riyadh, Jeddah and Al Qassim. Depending on the availability of the participants, the researcher might take the choice to involve participants from other areas. Before filling in the questionnaire, participants will be asked to use their intuition to rate each speaker. At the end of the questionnaire, participants will be asked to rate where they think each speaker comes from to see if correct recognition was obtained.
Possible questions are as follows:
In your opinion:
Which one would be best working in a call centre?
Which one would be best as a news reader?
Which one would be best as a teacher?
Which one would be best as a preacher?
Which one would do best at a job interview?
Which one sounds more convincing?
Which one sounds more authentic?
Which one sounds most honest?
Which one sounds most joyful?
Which one sounds most serious?
Which one sounds most relaxed?
Which one sounds most pleasing?
Which one sounds most annoying?
Which one sounds most hard working?
Which one sounds most religious?
Possible results and analysis
As considerable consistency was found in many studies regarding participant’s perceptions to standard varieties being prestigious and the less standard being more socially attractive, the result of this proposed study will show if such consistency is found. Moreover, since some
scholars believe that Arabic dialects are on the course of disappearing and standardising due the strong effect of the mass media (Al‐Wer 1997), results of a question such as, “Are you proud of your dialect?” will allow us to see people’s attitudes in that regard. In addition we will be able know whether any significant patterns of perception correlate with the gender of the participants since, as mentioned earlier, the interaction between men and women is limited compared to other western societies. According to the central department of statistics and information in Saudi Arabia (2004), almost half of the Saudi population is aged less than 25 years old which could potentially show significant differences in their ratings of social attractiveness and prestige, as has been found in the model study.
As mentioned earlier, big cities in Saudi Arabia consist mostly of people moving there from smaller social contexts such as villages or tribal areas creating a very diverse social community in those big cities. This process results in the emergence of standard dialects in those big cities (Abu-Haidar 1989). Al-Rojaie (2013) claims that such a process is now occurring in the case of the dialect spoken in Riyadh. Results should give an indication of whether or not this happening. In addition, since there is a number of big cities in Saudi Arabia which are included in the study, results will allow us to see whether there is a pattern of standard dialects perceived from participants in the surrounding smaller cities or only one standard dialect in Saudi Arabia.
Results will also show whether or not correct identification of a particular dialect results in a certain attitude towards that dialect. I am interested to see if there is a difference in perception between people living in Riyadh and the two other provinces, which could be related to the effect of urbanisation. Since Saudi Arabia declares itself as an Islamic state, and Islamic culture and teachings are highly valued by most of the Saudi society (FRD 2006; Zwemer and Dennis 1990; Burke 2011), I would expect informants to identify certain varieties as more religious, for example, since the area of Al Qassim is usually perceived to be the most conservative region in Saudi Arabia (Burke 2011), I would think that participants would rate it higher in terms of religion and possibly rate the Hejazi dialect lower in that regard.
Conclusion
The outcome of this work would add to the field of sociolinguistics by describing language attitudes in the Arabic community and the Saudi community in particular. In addition, the results of this work would provide valuable cross-cultural comparisons to be made. Moreover, I think the results of such a study, if published, would contribute to raising language awareness in Saudi Arabia.
Work cited and consulted
Abu-Haidar, Farida. "Are Iraqi women more prestige conscious than men? Sex differentiation in Baghdadi Arabic." Language in Society 18.4 (1989): 471-481.
Al-Essa, A. (2009). When Najd meets Hijaz: dialect contact in Jeddah. Arabic dialectology. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 203-222.
Al-Azraqi, Munira. (2007). The use of Kaškašah/Kaskasah and alternative means among educated urban Saudi speakers. In C. Miller, E. Al-Wer, D. Caubet, & J. C. E.Watson (eds.), Arabic in the city: Issues in dialect contact and language variation. London: Routledge. 230–245.
Al-Rojaie, Yousef. "Regional dialect leveling in Najdi Arabic: The case of the deaffrication of [k] in the Qaṣīmī dialect." Language Variation and Change 25.01 (2013): 43-63.
Al Wer, Enam. "Arabic between reality and ideology." International journal of applied linguistics 7.2 (1997): 251-265.
Burke, Jason. "Saudi Arabia's Clerics Challenge King Abdullah's Reform Agenda." The Guardian [London] 01 July 2011.
Coupland, Nikolas, and Hywel Bishop. "Ideologised values for British accents1." Journal of Sociolinguistics 11.1 (2007): 74-93.
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Hiraga, Yuko. "British attitudes towards six varieties of English in the USA and Britain." World Englishes 24.3 (2005): 289-308.
Holes, Clive. (1991). Kashkasha and the fronting and affrication of the velar stops revisited: A contribution to the historical phonology of the peninsular Arabic dialects. Semitic Studies 1:652–678.
Ingham, Bruce. Najdi Arabic: Central Arabian. Vol. 1. John Benjamins Publishing, 1994.
Lindemann, Stephanie. "Koreans, Chinese or Indians? Attitudes and ideologies about non‐native English speakers in the United States." Journal of Sociolinguistics 7.3 (2003): 348-364.
McKenzie, Robert M. "The role of variety recognition in Japanese university students’ attitudes towards English speech varieties." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 29.2 (2008): 139-153.
Prochazka, Theodore. Saudi Arabian dialects. Kegan Paul International, 1988.
Van Herk, Gerard. What Is Sociolinguistics? Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Print.
Zwemer, Samuel Marinus, and James S. Dennis. Arabia: the cradle of Islam. FH Revell Company, 1900.