The Sociolinguistic Market in Cairo: Gender, Class and Education. - Review - book review

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Summer, 2000 by Atiqa Hachimi

Chapter three illustrates the linguistic and sociolinguistic characterization of palatalization. Based on articulatory and spectrographic analyses, Haeri distinguished frication (weak palatalization) and affrication (strong palatalization) of dental stops /t, d, T, D, tt, dd/ next to palatal sounds.

Investigation of the social distribution of palatalization shows that women's speeches reflect frequent and advanced palatalization, while men's do not. Weak palatalization was shown to be higher among young women speakers, and it is argued that palatalization is a sound change in progress with women from the upper classes in the lead. On the other hand, women in the lower classes use strong palatalization the most. Haeri argues that this is a result of hypercorrection. That is, motivated by prestige and upward mobility, lower class women try to imitate the speech of the upper class but miss the target and end up with affrication rather than frication.

Chapter four examines the linguistic and sociolinguistic dimensions of the reappearance of the Classical qaf in the Cairene speech community. Historically, qaf merged with the hamza (the glottal stop), except in some restricted domains mainly religious ones. However, with the spread of mass education, which brought forth exposure to Classical Arabic, classical qaf has reentered Cairene Arabic speech. Because the qaf variable shows an interaction between Classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic, Haeri coins the term "diglossic variable" to distinguish it from sociolinguistic variables in both diglossic and non-diglossic settings.

From the outset of this chapter, Haeri states that the use of the qaf is the most common borrowing from Classical Arabic. She provides a comprehensive review of diachronic and synchronic analyses for the qaf and presents competing approaches for its presence in modern dialects of Arabic. She concluded, following the analysis of older studies, that the qaf reappearance can be accounted for by lexical borrowing model rather than the application of a rule as some recent studies have postulated.

In the second part of this chapter, Haeri explores the social groups in which qaf has re-appeared. Findings show that men in all educational levels and social classes have a significantly higher usage of the Classical/ Standard qaf than women. This implies that the linguistic behavior of Cairene women is less "conservative" than men, a finding that corroborates findings of previous studies across the Arab world. Furthermore, upper class speakers with the highest levels of education were not the ones who most frequently use this Classical/ Standard variable. These results are a very useful aspect in Haeri's study because they stand in sharp contrast to those in non-diglossic speech communities where women, more than men, and upper classes, more than lower classes, use standard variants the most.

Chapter five offers explanations that aim at resolving the unusual finding of gender, class and education patterns in the Cairene speech community. Haeri rightly rejects previous accounts that regard the less conservative linguistic behavior of women in Arab societies as an outcome of their reduced access to public domains and education, where exposure and learning of Classical Arabic are possible. Like other sociolinguists working in Arabic, she also calls for exercising great care in associating the concept of the "standard language" with the "dominant group", which many theories and empirical studies take as a given. Instead, Haeri argues that before such generalizations can be made, an astute look at "the role and place of Arabic within the hierarchy of linguistic repertoire of Egypt"(pp.159-160) is in order if a sensible understanding of emerging problems is to be reached.