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Title:
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Linguistic Variation in Damascus Arabic: A quantitative analysis of men's and women's speech
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Author:
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Jamil Daher
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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New York University
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1998
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Sociolinguistics
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Subject Language(s):
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English
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Language Family(ies):
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New English
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Director(s):
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John Singler
John Costello
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Abstract:
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It has been widely observed that in most speech communities, men and women exhibit somewhat different speech norms. There has been much speculation as to the reasons behind this: whether social or political or cultural. The Damascus speech community is no exception; men and women in Damascus display different speech habits. A major focus of this dissertation concerns the various pronunciations of the sounds (q), (th), (dh), (aw) and (ay) in everyday speech. The primary purpose of this study was to examine linguistic variation among Damascene men and women and to relate that variation to the notion of diglossia: a situation in which two language varieties co-exist and are used for different purposes.
The dissertation examins the historical and contemporary relationship between Standard Arabic (al-fusha) and the Damascene dialect (al-lahja ash-shamiyya) on the levels of grammar, phonology and lexicon, and illustrates many differences and similarities between the two.
The study is based on recorded interviews with 46 Damascenes (23 men and 23 women, of varying ages and educational levels). These interviews were analyzed in great detail with the help of a computer program designed specifically for statistical linguistic analysis (Varbrul). The analysis considered four major social factors of the speakers, their sex, their age, their educational level, and to a certain extent their profession and occupation in society. Other factors which were found to influence the variability included the speaker's involvement with the written language, the topic of discussion and the relationship between the speakers.
The study concluded that our speech is always variable and that, rather than being rigidly separate, 'Standard' and 'colloquial' are more accurately viewed as hypothetical extremes of a continuum of linguistic variation on which most speech falls somewhere in the middle. The study argued that speakers tend to use pronunciations associated with social groups with which they wish to be identified and that the difference between men's and women's pronunciations is due, at least in part, to the fact that they play - and wish to play - different roles in society.
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Page Updated: 28-Nov-2009
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