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Language Attitudes among Arab Americans: Exploring the Role of Interdialectal Ideology.
Abstract
The presence of Arabic, as a heritage language, has been challenged by to the recent sociopolitical climate in the US which impedes its maintenance and expedites its attrition. Thus, a critical need arises to examine the interplay of language attitudes and ideologies and their role in the maintenance of Arabic as a minority language. Investigating language attitudes in different speech communities has been essential in understanding the roles that they play in language attrition (Baker, 1992) as pivotal component of human behavior (Edwards, 2011) and in shaping attitudes towards it speakers (Fasold, 1984; Garrett, 2010, Soulaimani, 2019). Many language studies in the Arab World have examined the relationship between the different Arabic varieties and their speakers (Miller, 2005; Sayahi, 2014; Hachimi, 2013; Cotter 2016). However, lesser focus through has been placed on the examination of intergenerational nature of language attitude in interdialectal diasporic contexts. This can shed light on the circulating language ideologies that shape the stratifications of these varieties and their speakers. Drawing on data from a larger corpus of language attitudes and use amongst Arab Americans, this paper uses a language questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, natural conversations to examine language attitudinal dispositions of speakers of different Arabic language varieties and the ideological relationship that organize its ingroup and outgroup members. The economic dominance of the speakers of Levantine and Egyptian varieties as a established communities in the US is conflated with their mediatized status in the Arab World which results into a puristic stance toward speakers of lesser mediatized, newly established ingroup varieties such as Maghrebi and Sudanese. The circulating language ideological beliefs, I argue, not only inhibit intergroup interactions but impedes the intergenerational maintenance of Arabic as heritage language. In light of these results, I discuss the implications that language attitudes and ideologies have on the heritage speakers’ limited exposure to different varieties of Arabic and the future prospects of the maintenance of Arabic as a minority language in the US.
Discipline
Linguistics
Geographic Area
Gulf
Sub Area
None