The purpose of this paper is to investigate the roles an educated speaker of Arabic performs through code-switching. Previous studies, such as Holes’ analysis of Nasser’s use of code-switching, focus on the alternation of Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial in terms of stance and function. Using performance theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I re-evaluate the diglossic nature of Arabic and show that the colloquial-standard duality is in fact better described as a repertoire through which speakers of Arabic select different roles and achieve various functions. To answer my research question I analyzed an unscripted 112-minute speech by the Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi. I used CDA to examine instances of code-switching between Egyptian Colloquial and Modern Standard Arabic. I found that the speaker’s complex is linked to and triggered by the socio-political context of the post-revolution Egypt. Morsi delivered this speech at the end of his first 100-day period of assuming office, when the president and his political party had been harshly criticized for shortcomings in managing the transitional stage. The analysis revealed that Morsi played four major roles by selecting features from his linguistic repertoire: 1) the Head of the Household; 2) the Ruler-Citizen; 3) the ’im?m or religious leader; and 4) the Storyteller. Analytic tools such as performance theory and CDA reveal the multifaceted nature of language production and suggest that new models such as that of repertoire are more helpful in understanding the linguistic behavior of Arabic speakers.

Verbal performances--ranging from song and recitation of poems to comedy acts and news broadcasts--are rich sites of linguistic variation with great popular appeal. These performances not only reflect language variation, but also drive it, through establishing new registers marked by distinct combinations of linguistic and performative cues. Such cues may include grammatical and lexical elements of a performance, speech style, and meter or form. Combinations of cues become familiar to listeners, and serve to key specific performative registers. Successful verbal performances drive variation in speaker repertoires as speakers absorb new combinations of cues and imitate, reference, or evoke the ambiance of verbal performance in both daily speech and in performative settings. The creative nature of performance leads to the consistent blurring of previously held notions of genre and associated dialect use and complicates both types of categorization. I suggest that comparative study of language use from within a set of contrasting performances can reveal the depth of language variation in performed genres, and its associated performative variation. The effect of verbal performances on speaker repertoires can also be explored through analysis of discourse on performers and their performances, and by following successive performances that share stylistic features or similar combinations of linguistic and performative cues. This paper focuses on dialect and variety in performed poetry, taking as its case study the poetic texts of Umm Kulthum's songs and her performances of these texts. Umm Kulthum’s songs contain the voices of dozens of Egyptian and Arab poets and span diverse poetic and musical forms. In fact, we can consider the lyrics of her songs some of the best known poems among Arabic speakers of all generations, widely understood and memorized. Through analysis of the linguistic and performative cues that mark the range of Umm Kulthum's performances, I suggest that these performances not only reflect the multiglossic Arabic reality but also drive language variation that reaches speaker repertoires.

This paper proposes the appearance of a new variety in the speech of Saudi Arabia’s youth, which is continuing to spread around the country. The study has examined the use of this variety in three hours of recordings of six young famous Saudi YouTube vloggers (video bloggers). The features of this variety are not yet stable, but generally speakers tended to accommodate their language to that of Hijaz, which they see as a cosmopolitan, modern center that represents youth future aspiration. The study shows significant gender differences in the use of this variety which were guided mainly by cultural and social motivations, such as the need to minimize the cultural gap between different social classes or to gain prestige. This distinction in the use of the variety can be compared to ‘Valley Girl’ speech that emerged in the US during the 80s of the previous century (Hinton et al, 1987). Also, the study reveals that performance plays a significant role and represents another distinction between the two genders in the use of the new variety. Keeping Labov’s notion of “the observer’s paradox” in mind, I use Bauman’s devices of performance as art to examine the use of the emerging variety. This examination showed that male speakers exhibit unnatural or ‘performance’ speech, while females exhibit it to a lesser degree, which suggests that this is the natural type of speech females produce on a daily basis. Performance theory thus helps us to explain the mechanism behind sociolinguists’ observation that women are leaders in language change. The study concludes that performance has played an important role in the emergence of this new variety of Arabic.

Linguistic Performance in Qatari Arabic Badawi, Bassiouney, Holes and Ibrahim have all contributed to the quest for strong sociolinguistic models of language variation. However, studies of the ways in which language is “designed” according to context and audience have focused largely on examples of Arabic derived from Egyptian and Levantine varieties. Little attention has been given to the Gulf dialects and their manifestations of variation. It is the objective of this paper to apply the theoretical lens of performance (Bauman) to the study of language performance in the production of Qatari speakers of Arabic. The methodology of the research rests on a linguistic analysis of language production of educated Qataris speaking in formal contexts. The socio-economic strata of Qatari speakers represented in the research range from average citizens to the Prime Minister. In 10 hours of speech extracted from TV and my own recordings, I isolate, identify and analyze the phonetic, lexical and grammatical manifestations of language which deviate from the non-performance register of Qatari Arabic as it is documented by Johnstone, Ingham and Holes. The findings of the paper indicate that while Qatari linguistic production in performance contexts shows little phonetic variation, it is rich in lexical and syntactic variation. Qataris tend to signal performance register with a preference given to substituting the Qatari variety for MSA or, in some cases, an Egyptian equivalent. The results demonstrate how Qataris shift their language patterns when speaking in formal contexts from their native dialect to a performance register. I propose that these shifts represent a performance variety of Qatari that is prestigious, erudite, sophisticated and appropriate for formal contexts. These findings suggest an effort on behalf of Qatari speakers to distance their speech from Bedouin features when speaking in performance contexts, and to associate Egyptian Arabic as well as MSA with academia and erudition. This unexpected result helps us understand the difference between the social and performance aspects of language performance.