Beta
155648

Gender and Phonological Variation in Cairene Arabic

Article

Last updated: 25 Dec 2024

Subjects

-

Tags

-

Abstract

Gender in relation to social class and language variation among different speech communities has attracted a great deal of research. Language use by men and women often reflects gender exclusive roles, social status and power. If their social roles overlap, their use of speech forms overlaps by producing different quantities or frequencies of the same speech form. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of gender in the production of variants of the long vowel /aa/, /ee/, /ɑɑ/ among the lower working (LWC) in the Cairene speech community. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 24 informants. Five jurists completed a forced choice to judge the vowel length of the long vowel /aa/, /ee/, / ɑɑ/. Results of the Z-test confirm that LWC women use the extra-long variants [aa:], [ee:] and [ɑɑ:] significantly more than the LWC men. Using the stigmatized extra-lengthened forms by women is considered a sign of showing solidarity with members of their local community and of constructing a social identity of the forceful and assertive women whose opinions should be valued. Vowel lengthening is interpreted as an attempt to resist the sociocultural norms that describe their role as only subordinate to men in Arabic speaking communities.

DOI

10.21608/herms.2020.155648

Keywords

Gender, social class, social identity, quantitative, phonological variation

Authors

First Name

Norice William

Last Name

Methias

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

The Department of English Language and Literature University of Cairo

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Wesam Khairy Mohamed

Last Name

Morsi

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

-

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

9

Article Issue

(31، 32، 33، 34)

Related Issue

22854

Issue Date

2020-03-01

Receive Date

2021-03-11

Publish Date

2020-03-01

Page Start

197

Page End

232

Print ISSN

2090-8555

Online ISSN

2974-4695

Link

https://hermes.journals.ekb.eg/article_155648.html

Detail API

https://hermes.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=155648

Order

23

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

1,100

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

هرمس

Publication Link

https://hermes.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Gender and Phonological Variation in Cairene Arabic

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023