The Maghreb‐Mashreq language ideology and the politics of identity in a globalized Arab world1

2013/06/01 by Atiqa Hachimi · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Multilingual Education and Policy #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Ideology #Vernacular #Identity (music) #Politics #Linguistics #Sociology #Arabic #Scholarship #Political science #Art #Aesthetics #Law #Philosophy

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/josl.12037

openalex publication_date 2013/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

To date, most scholarship on Arabic language ideologies has focused on the contentious relationship between Standard Arabic and the spoken vernaculars. This paper, in contrast, draws attention to the hierarchies among the regional varieties of vernacular Arabic. Specifically, it makes visible the workings of what it calls the ‘Maghreb‐Mashreq language ideology’: the hierarchical relationship between Mashreqi (Middle Eastern) and Maghrebi (North African) vernacular Arabic varieties. The paper explores, in particular, the de/authentication of linguistic Arabness through a detailed analysis of a transnational pan‐Arab reality/talent TV show. Drawing on clips of situated interactions from this series, which have been uploaded to YouTube and commented upon by viewers, the paper argues that the new media is a critical site for reworking longstanding language ideologies and the politics of identity in the Arabic‐speaking world.[Arabic]

Citations

• Intertextuality as Source and Evidence for Indirect Indexical Meanings
• The urban and the urbane: Identities, language ideologies, and Arabic dialects in Morocco
• Mock Ebonics: Linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics on the Internet
• Dialect stylization in radio talk
• Language choice, social institutions, and symbolic domination
• Poetics and Performances as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life
• Language style as audience design
• Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research
• Voice, Footing, Enregisterment
• The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness
• Language Ideology

Cited by

• Levantine Arabic [wikipedia]

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