Valentina Serreli's book explores the linguistic ecology of the Siwa Oasis, an indigenous minority community in Egypt that speaks the Berber language. The book focuses on the community's language practices, folk discourses, and ideologies, drawing on a decade of fieldwork and close observations of particular families (chapter 2). Serreli examines how people have recontextualized and reinterpreted traditions, identities, and language in response to the social, political, and economic changes within the Siwa Oasis.
Serreli explains various factors that have influenced the linguistic ecology of the Siwa Oasis, including migration (both to and from the Oasis), education, mass media, intermarriage, and religion. These forces have contributed to a shift from monolingualism in Siwi to societal bilingualism, with Siwi-speaking adults and children, regardless of education level, using both Siwi (heritage and local language) and Arabic (as the national language). While Siwans previously spoke a Bedouin-type Arabic influenced by the Awlād ʕAlī tribe, the current L2 vehicular Arabic spoken by Siwans is closer to Egyptian Arabic, particularly the urban variety spoken in Cairo. This shift is largely driven by the higher economic and symbolic capital associated with Egyptian Arabic (chapter 3).
Serreli discusses how the Egyptian state's nation-building initiatives, which included modernization projects and Arabicization policies, significantly influenced the sociocultural and linguistic shifts in the Siwa Oasis. Siwans conceptualize these transformations as a transition toward the ‘Egyptian’ way of life. The concept of ‘becoming Egyptian’ encompasses the increasing prevalence of Arabic alongside the Siwi language as well as the embrace of educational values, urban lifestyles, and middle-class aspirations. This shift is reflected in the use of modern building materials and architectural styles along with changes in clothing, jewellery, and wedding rituals (chapter 4).
Serreli further explained that despite the pressure of national assimilation and the Arabicization process, Siwans maintain vertical (across generations) and horizontal (across social variables) use of Siwi. This societal bilingualism, where Arabic and Siwi are functionally distributed, appears to operate in an efficient manner. Siwi dominates in-group communication and, for some speakers, serves as a marker of Siwan heritage and identity, while Arabic is used for intergroup communication with varying levels of proficiency depending on age, gender, and education (chapters 5 and 6). However, as Arabic reaches a stable presence in education and religious domains, its use has expanded into in-group communication, particularly among university students, teenagers, and young couples who wish to teach Arabic to their children (chapter 7).
Overall, this book offers a nuanced sociolinguistic analysis of the Siwi Oasis. The strength of the book resides in the author's ability to present various (and sometimes opposing) perspectives of the local Siwans as well as the Egyptians and Bedouins across age, gender, socioeconomic status, and education. Serreli's research makes a notable contribution to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology by demonstrating how to situate peoples’ discourse, ideologues, and language practices within a broader ecological framework.
