Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-2024
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Croft Institute for International Studies
First Advisor
Kristin Hickman
Second Advisor
Emad Gerges Al-Rawy
Third Advisor
Kenneth Negy
Relational Format
Abstract
There is a hidden power imbalance in the Arabic-speaking world. It is not related to warfare, politics, or oil, but language. For decades, Egyptian and Levantine (Mashreqi) dialects have been over-represented in Arabic language media, to the detriment of North African (Maghrebi) dialects. This imbalance has played a crucial role in reinforcing what Hachimi (2013) refers to as the “Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology,” i.e. the belief that Mashreqi dialects are superior to Maghrebi dialects. Yet in an era of social media, Mashreqi voices and dialects are becoming less dominant, and Arabic-speakers across the region are being increasingly exposed to Maghrebi voices and dialects. In this thesis, I investigate whether the growing presence of Maghrebi speakers in social media is having an impact on longstanding stereotypes about the inferiority, illegibility, and impurity of their dialects. In other words, does the growing presence of Maghrebi speakers on social media provide a new opportunity for the "Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology" to be challenged? Or is social media simply another media platform where this long standing ideology is being reinforced? To answer this question, I undertake a qualitative analysis of one particularly viral genre of social media video: dialect comparisons. Through a linguistic anthropological analysis of two dialect comparison videos, I argue that while social media can serve as a site for reinforcing the "Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology," it also provides unique opportunities for this ideology to be exposed and thus challenged. By making this argument, I seek to provide a crucial update and important nuance to the existing literature on language ideologies, in the Arabic-speaking world and beyond.
Recommended Citation
Stewart-Kuhn, Jacquelyn, ""Speak Arabic!": Arabic Dialect Comparison Videos and the Reconfiguration of the Maghreb-Mashreq Language Ideology" (2024). Honors Theses. 3180.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/3180
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