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

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

To this end, Haeri reaches out to Bourdieu's notion of the linguistic market, which stresses the importance of symbolic capital for access to the labor market and upward social mobility. Because knowledge of the standard is often a valuable piece of capital, this has led to linking greater use of the standard of official variety to dominant groups who belong to upper classes. Haeri argues this notion proves to be helpful in explaining the dynamics of the sociolinguistic settings of Western speech communities but is inadequate to provide an accurate picture for the sociolinguistic situation in Cairo.

Haeri argues that in Cairo it is speakers' bi- or multi-lingualism rather than their use of Classical/Standard Arabic that secures better access to the labor market and casts one as belonging to the upper class. She observes that the linguistic market of Cairo requires multiple "currencies" and that the "currency" of Standard Arabic is by no means the only nor the most eminent currency. Rather, it is knowledge and use of other languages, like English, German or French that is of utmost importance in the Cairene linguistic market. This sheds some light on why members of the upper classes in Cairene speech community are not the ones who know nor use the standard language the most, as is the case in non-diglossic speech communities.

Furthermore, Haeri argues that the repertoire of the Cairene speech community consists of more than one standard variety. Thus, there are two kinds of standard varieties, a Classical standard; and non-classical standard. The Classical standard is based on Classical/Standard Arabic and derives its dominance and prestige from its direct link to Islamic culture and civilization. The non-classical standard, or urban Cairene, on the other hand, draws its dominance and prestige from its association with the social dialect of urban, upper class social groups.

Haeri re-examines gender patterns along these lines and concluded that the linguistic behavior of women in Cairo is not any less "conservative" than women around the world with respect to the use of the standard variety. In other words, by directly comparing Cairene women's use of non-classical standard variants with women's use of standard variants in non-diglossic communities she showed that Cairene women can be interpreted as using standard urban dialectal forms. However, Haeri acknowledges that non-classical standard Arabic is not a conservative variety because it co-exists with a more conservative variety: Classical Arabic.

Haeri rejects the idea that women's less conservative behavior with regard to qaf usage (that is, their use of the hamza rather than the classical qaf) is a matter of differential access to education, which does not hold in this case because subjects included men and women with equivalent education. To explain women's less frequent use of Classical Arabic features, Haeri draws out attention to the different practices of men and women in domains where classical Arabic functions as a religious language, such as praying aloud in the case of men versus praying in silence in the case of women. Thus, reciting prayers out loud, Haeri argues, provides men with an opportunity and a stage to perform these prayers with an accurate pronunciation, an activity that is required and highly valued.