Insight into the Attitudes of Speakers of Urban Meccan Hijazi Arabic towards their Dialect
Abstract
The current study mainly aims to examine the attitudes of speakers of Urban Meccan Hijazi Arabic (UMHA) towards their dialect, which is spoken in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It also investigates whether the participants’ age, sex and educational level have any impact on their perception of their dialect. To this end, I designed a 5-point-Likert-scale questionnaire, requiring participants to rate their attitudes towards their dialect. I asked 80 participants, whose first language is UMHA, to fill out the questionnaire. On the basis of the three independent variables, namely, age, sex and educational level, the participants were divided into three groups: old and young speakers, male and female speakers and educated and uneducated speakers. The results reveal that in general, all the groups (young and old, male and female, and educated and uneducated participants) have a sense of responsibility towards their dialect, making their attitudes towards their dialect positive. However, differences exist between the three groups. For instance, old speakers tend to express their pride of their dialect more than young speakers. The same pattern is observed in male and female groups. The results show that females may feel embarrassed to provide answers that may imply that they are not proud of their own dialect, since the majority of women in the Arab world, in general, are under more pressure to conform to the overt norms of the society than males. Therefore, I argue that most Arab women may not have the same freedom to express their opinions and feelings about various issues. Based on the results, the study concludes with some recommendations for further research.
Keywords: sociolinguistics, language attitudes, dialectology, social variables, Urban Meccan Hijazi Arabic
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Alahmadi, S. D. (2015). Loanwords in the Urban Meccan Hijazi Dialect: An Analysis of Lexical Variation according to Speakers’ Sex, Age and Education. International Journal of English Linguistics, 5(6), 34-58. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v5n6p34.
Altakhaineh, A., and Rahrouh, H. (2015). The Use of Euphemistic Expressions by Arab EFL Learners: Evidence from Al Ain University of Science and Technology. International Journal of English Linguistics, 5(1), 14-21. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v5n1p14.
Altakhaineh, A., and Zibin, A. (2014). Perception of Culturally Loaded Words by Arab EFL Learners. International Journal of Linguistics, 6 (3), 1-22. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i3.4922.
Baker, C. (1976). Attitudes and language. Cleveland: Multilingual Matters.
Dittmar, N., and Schlobinski, P. (1988). The Sociolinguistics of Urban Vernaculars: Case Studies and Their Evaluation. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Eckert, P. (1989). The Whole Woman: Sex and Gender Differences in Variation. Language Variation and Change, 1, 245-267.
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Leong, N. C. (2014). A Study of Attitudes towards the Speak Mandarin Campaign in Singapore. Intercultural Communication Studies, 23(3), 53-65.
McClelland, D. (1961). The achieving society. London: Free Press.
Meyerhoff, M., Schleef, E., and Mackenzie, L. (2015). Doing sociolinguistics: A practical guide to data collection and analysis. London: Routledge.
Migunda-Attyang, J. (2007). Attitudes towards Sheng: An Emerging Language in Nairobi. Chemichemi. International Journal of the School of Social Sciences, 4(1), 29-43.
Obiols, M. (2002). The Matched Guise Technique: A Critical Approximation to a Classic Test for Formal Measurement of Language Attitudes. Noves SL. Revista de Sociolinguistica, 1, 1-6.
Pear, T. (1931). Voice and personality. London: Wiley.
Preston, D. R. (2002). Language with an attitude. In J. Chambers, N. Schilling-Estes and P. Trudgill (Eds.) Handbook of language Variation and Change (pp. 40- 66). Oxford: Blackwell.
Romaine, S. (1980). Stylistic Variation and Evaluative Reactions to Speech: Problems in the Investigation of Linguistic Attitudes in Scotland. Language and Speech, 23, 213-232.
Ryan, E. B., and Giles, H. (1982). Attitudes towards language variation. London: Edward Arnold.
Tagliamonte, S. (2006). Analysing sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wardhaugh, R. (2002). An introduction to sociolinguistics. 4th ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Williams, F. N. (1976). Explorations of the Linguistic Attitudes of Teachers. Rowley: Newbury House Publishers Inc., Massachusetts.
Zibin, A., and Altakhaineh, A. (2014). Informativity of Arabic Proverbs in Context: An Insight into Palestinian Discourse. International Journal of Linguistics, 6(1), 67-83. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i1.4857.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
![Creative Commons License](http://licensebuttons.net/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.