Abstract
The study investigates the use of cultural expressions that stem from a religious background in the international franchise TV talent show that is adapted to the pan-Arab audience, The Voice, ʾAhlā Ṣōt. The researchers are interested to trace and index the use and function of these expressions, if any. The research questions that the study answers are:
1. Which references to God are used in the Arab Voice 2014 edition; what are their frequencies and who uses what references and how many times?
2. How can we interpret the use of these references in the Arab version of the Voice?
The data on which this article is built come from a PhD project on the ways in which actors in the Arab Voice, edition 2014, communicate with each other given the fact that they speak different Arabic dialects that can differ considerably from each other. Numerous communication instances are analyzed, focusing on diverse sociolinguistic aspects of the communication. In the present contribution, we focus on the use of references to God in the show, a subject that is not tackled in the thesis and therefore unique for the paper. The analysis focuses on the second edition of the show broadcast in 2014, more in particular on the four members of the jury and the three presenters of the show. We explicitly make use of the gloss ‘references to God’ and not ‘religious references’ as that would imply that the use of such references is inspired by religious convictions of the users.
The results index normalcy of the use of these expressions. In agreement with Versteegh (2020), the use of these expressions does not make Arabic an Islamic language. However, these expressions are used to carry out specific functions in the communication, such as amazement, praise, humor, gratitude, and more. Although the study finds out that these expressions are part of a shared repertoire among Arabs from different countries, there might be a reservation to use these expressions due to the specific nature of certain nationalities.
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