Description
Book SynopsisEl-Said Badawi’s seminal Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt was first published in Arabic in 1973. Its theory of interrelated language levels that are ever-changing along a sociolinguistic continuum inspired a generation of Arabists and Arabic-language educators to re-examine Arabic varieties from a wide range of perspectives, transforming the way scholars carried out research on language variation, lexicography, and teaching Arabic as a foreign language. Since that time, Arabic has witnessed major changes in the way its spoken and written forms are practiced, but informed, scholarly publications on the current reality of the linguistic landscape have been few and far between. This collective study, with contributions from renowned scholars of Arabic applied linguistics, draws on empirical data to bring together original new research on spoken and written language varieties in Egypt today. Thematically, Revisiting Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt explores three broad but interconnected areas: Arabic varieties in context, challenges to Badawi’s Levels model, and the pedagogical implications of varying levels in teaching Arabic as a foreign language. It not only discusses the current applicability of Badawi’s model to contexts such as contemporary Egyptian newspapers and Facebook, but looks at empirical data related to colloquial varieties in Egypt and elsewhere, the role of context in their current use, and the approaches to documenting and deriving colloquial lexicons. It also examines linguistic styles in different genres and contexts and for different audiences.
Table of ContentsContributors Transcription Foreword Badawi’s Levels: The Benefit of a Second Perusal Willem Stoetzer Introduction The Continuum Model in a Changing Sociolinguistic Reality Zeinab A. Taha Arabic Levels in Varying Contexts 1. The Dialect of Farafra Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt Manfred Woidich 2. Time and Tense in Basic Varieties of Arabic Kees Versteegh 3. LM YBL? MLK MBL?: The Namara Inscription, Line 4 Revisited Michael G. Carter 4. The Crucial Role of Context in Translating the Qur’an Muhammad Abdel Haleem 5. The Levels of Arabic: Linguistic Choice and Narrational Innovation in Yusuf Idris’s “?Arxa? Layali” Margaret Larkin Challenges to the Levels Model 6. Entangled Pyramids and Rainbows: On Challenging the Divide in a Written Mixed Text Gunvor Mejdell 7. The B-Prefix as a Tense Marker in ?Ammiyyat al-Mu?aqqafin Hanadi Tawwakol 8. ?Ammiyyat al-Mu?aqqafin: Conceptualization and Metaphor in Mustawayat al-?Arabiyya al-Mu?a?ira Karin Christina Ryding 9. Are Badawi’s Levels of Contemporary Arabic Reflected in Facebook? Shahira Yacout The Levels and Teaching of AFL 10. Solving the Arabic Language Dilemma: First Steps Munther Younes 11. A Contribution to the Lexicography of Egyptian Arabic (II) Mustafa Mughazy and Devin J. Stewart 12. Arabic Embodied: A Morphological Romp through a Different ‘Body Language’ Lisa J. White 13. Discourse Markers: Essential Tools in Spoken Arabic Diglossic Contexts Mona Kamel Hassan 14. Communicative Proficiency: Teacher and Learner Needs for a Diglossic Situation Waheed Samy 15. Arabizi: A Writing Variety Worth Learning? Mona Farrag Attwa Bibliography
