Language, Society and Ideologies in Multilingual Egypt


Book Description

The book explores the change over time in language-society relations in a multilingual periphery of Egypt. It examines the role of language ideologies in the construction and negotiation of social identities in the processes of contact, maintenance and shift typical of multilingualism. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews, it is the first of its kind to portray the inventory of linguistic and accompanying non-linguistic behaviors observed within and between different ethnolinguistic groups in the Siwa Oasis. It provides first-hand information about the linguistic habits of Siwan women, an aspect which is generally difficult to access in this gender-segregated community. The book sheds light on Berber-Arabic contact at the core of the Arab world and at a critical time when individual linguistic repertoires are expanding and Arabic is emerging as a powerful resource.




Exchange Ideologies


Book Description

Exchange Ideologies documents the social world of Aleppo's traders before the destruction of the city, exploring changing conceptions of commerce in Syria. Syria's traders have been seen as embodying a timeless culture of "the bazaar," or an ahistorical Islamic culture of trade. Other accounts portray them as venal figures, motivated only by profit, and commerce as a purely instrumental pursuit. Rejecting both approaches, Paul Anderson traces the diverse social structures, and notions of language, through which Aleppo's merchants understood and construed commerce and the figure of the merchant during a period of economic liberalization in the 2000s. Rather than seeing these social structures and representations as expressions of a timeless bazaar culture, or as shaped only by Islamic tradition, Exchange Ideologies relates them to processes of politically managed economic liberalization and the Syrian regime's attempts to ensure its own survival in the midst of change. In doing so, Anderson provides an account of economic liberalization in Syria as a social and cultural process as much as a political and economic one.




Challenges in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language


Book Description

An essential collection of empirical studies on the TAFL (teaching Arabic as a foreign language) classroom experience, by leading professionals in the field Although teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) has grown inexorably in recent decades, there is a dearth of empirical research on the TAFL classroom experience. In this insightful volume, Dalal Abo El Seoud brings together up-to-date practice-based research and conceptual contributions by eighteen professionals in the field. These address a wide range of challenges in teaching Arabic as a foreign language and ways of overcoming them with a clear eye to twenty-first-century language-learning skills, which advocate communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. The chapters address curriculum design, teaching Arabic to non-English speakers, trends in the use of technology, motivating students, teaching Arabic language varieties, and teaching language skills. This volume will be an invaluable resource for teachers and teachers in training of TAFL and for scholars and researchers in the field. Contributors: Dalal Abo El Seoud, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Hagar Lotfy Amer, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Wael M. Asfour, independent scholar, Cairo, Egypt Mona Azzam, State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, USA Mahmoud Al-Batal, The American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon Nino Ejibadze, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia Shereen Y. El Ezabi, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Mohamed Ibrahim, Kafrelsheikh University, Kafr al-Sheikh, Egypt Mimi Melkonian, Brunswick School, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA Haitham S. Mohamed, University of California, Berkeley, Berkely, California, USA Joanna Natalia Murkocinska, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Heba Salem, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Mohamed Sawaie, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA Laila Al-Sawi, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Paweł Siwiec, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland Iman Aziz Soliman, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Przemysław Turek, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland Shahira Yacout, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt




The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism


Book Description

This cutting-edge research companion addresses our current understanding of literary journalism’s global scope and evolution, offering an immersive study of how different nations have experimented with and perfected the narrative journalistic form/genre over time. The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism demonstrates the genre’s rich genealogy and global impact through a comprehensive study of its many traditions, including the crónica, the ocherk, reportage, the New Journalism, the New New Journalism, Jornalismo literário, periodismo narrativo, bao gao wen xue, creative nonfiction, Literarischer Journalismus, As-SaHafa al Adabiyya, and literary nonfiction. Contributions from a diverse range of established and emerging scholars explore key issues such as the current role of literary journalism in countries radically affected by the print media crisis and the potential future of literary journalism, both as a centerpiece to print media writ large and as an academic discipline universally recognized around the world. The book also discusses literary journalism's responses to war, immigration, and censorship; its many female and Indigenous authors; and its digital footprints on the internet. This extensive and authoritative collection is a vital resource for academics and researchers in literary journalism studies, as well as in journalism studies and literature in general. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Manuscript and Print in the Islamic Tradition


Book Description

This volume explores and calls into question certain commonly held assumptions about writing and technological advancement in the Islamic tradition. In particular, it challenges the idea that mechanical print naturally and inevitably displaces handwritten texts as well as the notion that the so-called transition from manuscript to print is unidirectional. Indeed, rather than distinct technologies that emerge in a progressive series (one naturally following the other), they frequently co-exist in complex and complementary relationships – relationships we are only now starting to recognize and explore. The book brings together essays by internationally recognized scholars from an array of disciplines (including philology, linguistics, religious studies, history, anthropology, and typography) whose work focuses on the written word – channeled through various media – as a social and cultural phenomenon within the Islamic tradition. These essays promote systematic approaches to the study of Islamic writing cultures writ large, in an effort to further our understanding of the social, cultural and intellectual relationships between manuscripts, printed texts and the people who use and create them.




Arabic Sociolinguistics


Book Description

In this second edition of Arabic Sociolinguistics, Reem Bassiouney expands the discussion of major theoretical approaches since the publication of the book’s first edition to account for new sociolinguistic theories in Arabic contexts with up-to-date examples, data, and approaches. The second edition features revised sections on diglossia, code-switching, gender discourse, language variation, and language policy in the region while adding a chapter on critical sociolinguistics—a new framework for critiquing the scholarly practices of sociolinguistics. Bassiouney also examines the impact of politics and new media on Arabic language. Arabic Sociolinguistics continues to be a uniquely valuable resource for understanding the theoretical framework of the language.




The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World


Book Description

Introduction / Jacob Hoigilt and Gunvor Mejdell -- A language for the people? quantitative indicators of written darija and 'ammiyya in Cairo and Rabat / Kristian Takvam Kindt and Tewodros Kebede -- Diglossia as ideology / Kristen Brustad -- Changing norms, concepts and practices of written Arabic: a 'long distance' perspective / Gunvor Mejdell -- Contemporary darija writings in Morocco: ideology and practices / Catherine Miller -- Morocco: an informal passage to literacy in darija (Moroccan Arabic) / Dominique Caubet -- Adab sakhir (satirical literature) and the use of Egyptian vernacular / Eva Marie Haland -- Dialect with an attitude: language and criticism in new Egyptian print media / Jacob Hoigilt -- Writing oral and literary culture: the case of the contemporary Moroccan zajal / Alexander Elinson -- The politics of pro-'ammiyya language ideology in Egypt / Mariam Aboelezz -- Moralizing stances: discursive play and ideologies of language and gender in Moroccan digital discourse / Atiqa Hachimi -- The language of online activism: a case from Kuwait / Jon Nordenson -- The oralization of writing: argumentation, profanity and literacy in cyberspace / Emad Abdel Latif




Arabic in the Fray


Book Description

The pre-modern period saw a background of inter-ethnic strife among Arabs and non-Arabs, mainly Persians. Starting from the symbolic and cognitive roles of language, Yasir Suleiman shows how discussions about the inimitability and (un)translatability of the Qur'an in this period were, at some deep level, concerned with issues of ethnic election. In this respect, theology and ethnicity emerge as partners in theorising language. Staying within the symbolic role of language, Suleiman goes on to investigate the role of paratexts and literary production in disseminating language ideologies and in cultural contestation. He shows how language symbolism is relevant to ideological debates about hybrid and cross-national literary production in the Arab milieu. In fact, language ideology appears to be everywhere, and a whole chapter is devoted to discussions of the cognitive role of language in linking thought to reality.




Language and Change in the Arab Middle East


Book Description

In this study of the rise of modern Arabic, Ayalon examines 19th-century linguistic change in the Eastern Arab world, describing how the language responded to the infiltration of Western politics, technology, and culture. Focusing on the realm of political discourse, Ayalon looks at a wide array of evidence--local chronicles, travel accounts, translations of European writings, Arab political treatises, newspapers and periodicals, and dictionaries--to show how shifts in the color, tone, and meaning of the Arab vocabulary reflected a new socio-political and cultural reality.