Saudi folks’ attitudes and perceptions towards accent switches: The /k/ reflexes across dialects.
The chapter explores language attitudes and motivations to accent switches between the reflexes of /k/ in the colloquial speech of a diverse range of Saudi women and men from different socioeconomic and regional backgrounds residing in the capital city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The folk linguistic approach was used to draw on lay peoples’ metalinguistic comments during an interview to uncover the sociolinguistic dimensions and cultural values underlying Saudi peoples’ use of indigenous reflexes of /k/ and accent switches to the supralocal form [k]. The results showed that Saudi folk had quite vivid mental maps regarding where /k/ reflexes are typically used in the Arabian Peninsula. The realization of native /k/ reflexes were linked to sociocultural representations such as tribal membership and exhibiting genealogical roots that were long established in the country. Saudis’ metacommentary also eluded to stereotypical judgments about regional groups and discrimination. It is argued that speakers’ metacommentary and perceptions regarding their language use offered insights into how social values are attached to linguistic variables and rationalized in peoples’ cultural/ideological system, while highlighting regional dialect variation and cross-community cultural differences.
The chapter explores language attitudes and motivations to accent switches between the reflexes of /k/ in the colloquial speech of a diverse range of Saudi women and men from different…
Little attention has been given in the Arabic sociolinguistics literature on examining levelling influences across speakers of different dialects and social backgrounds. Moreover, the effect of…
The study examines the clitic [-ki] as it occurs in the second person feminine singular object/ possessive pronoun suffix of stem final consonants in the speech of Saudis of Arabic Najdi dialect…