Language and Society in the Middle East and North Africa

This book investigates issues of central importance in understanding the role of language in society in the Middle East and North Africa. In particular, it covers issues of collective identity and variation as they relate to Arabic, Berber, English, Persian and Turkish in the fields of gender, national affiliation, the debate over authenticity and modernity, language reforms and language legislation. In addition, the book investigates how some of these issues are realized in the diaspora at both the micro and macro levels.

Yasir Suleiman

Introduction; 1: Language and Political Conflict in the Middle East; 2: Why Do Different Variables Behave Differently? Data from Arabic; 3: Sociolinguistic Reflexes of Socio-Political Patterns in Bethlehem; 4: Hebrew and English Borrowings Inpalestinian Arabic in Israel:; 5: Pronouns and Self Presentation in Public Discourse; 6: Language Choice, Language Policy and the Tradition-Modernity Debate in Culturally Mixed Postcolonial Communities; 7: The Status of Berber; 8: Comparative Perspectives on Language Planning in Iran and Tajikistan; 9: The Story of a Failed Attempt; 10: Gender in a Genderless Language; 11: The Sociolinguistic Connotations of /p/ and /v/ in Cairo Arabic; 12: Language and Diaspora; 13: Sociolinguistic Meaning in Code-Switching; 14: The Arabic Proverb and the Speech Community