The study of Arabic linguistics seems to lend itself quite easily to sociolinguistic investigation. Even highly descriptive grammars of Arabic and theoretical studies in formal Arabic syntax or phonology, for instance, rarely focus nowadays on Standard Arabic, as had been the case in centuries past. The realization that Arabic vernacular dialects matter is widely accepted as a given among scholars of Arabic linguistics, perhaps to the point where the boundaries between dialectology and sociolinguistics and between sociolinguistics and formal/theoretical linguistics are at times blurred.
This is partly what makes the Oxford handbook of Arabic linguistics an important reference tool for those of us whose interest lies in the juxtaposition of language and societal factors, for it encompasses under one roof studies in Arabic linguistics of virtually all persuasions. It includes, inter alia, contributions related to Arabic phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax, alongside sociolinguistics, dialectology, history, psycholinguistics, lexicography, computational linguistics, code-switching, and pidgins and creoles.
While it is tempting to provide a review of each of these chapters, I have confined myself to evaluating only a selection thereof, bearing in mind the readership of this journal. I therefore begin with reviewing the chapters most directly related to matters sociolinguistic, and end with a brief evaluation of material in other chapters that may be of interest to sociolinguists, even if these chapters do not explicitly cover matters of language and society.
In this vein, I begin with the chapter entitled ‘Sociolinguistics’, written by Enam Al-Wer. In this chapter, Al-Wer begins by framing sociolinguistics—and linguistics-at-large—as one of the social sciences. Furthermore, she limits the discussion predominantly to the William Labov/Peter Trudgill paradigm of variationist sociolinguistics. Her chapter is in constant dialogue with traditional Arabic dialectology on the one hand and the body of research amassed since Labov's Martha's Vineyard study in general (and mostly Anglo-American) sociolinguistics on the other. Dialectology, Al-Wer contends, is a ‘resource for sociolinguistics’ (p. 242), despite some fundamental differences between the two subdisciplines in both methodology and theory. A sizeable portion of this chapter is devoted to laying out the foundations of sociolinguistics as a research enterprise, and could, in fact, be read as a good introduction to general sociolinguistics, except that in lieu of (and occasionally in addition to) examples from English, as one is used to from most such texts, sociolinguistic theory is illustrated through recent studies on Arabic.
In one section of the chapter, Al-Wer expresses her discontent about the role Arabic sociolinguistic studies often play (and often do not play) in contributing to general sociolinguistics. She attributes much of this problem to the obsession (my word, not hers) so many linguists have had over the years with singling out Arabic as a ‘diglossic’ language. This often serves as a substitute for viewing Arabic as a language like any other language, which exhibits a great deal of variation, both within each speech community who speaks it and across different Arabophone communities. Much more could be said about this chapter alone, but in order to cover other portions of this handbook, I must conclude that this is an important chapter, which probably ought to become essential reading for all sociolinguists, as it dispels many myths about Arabic and its importance for the study of language variation.
In ‘Arabic folk linguistics: Between mother tongue and native language’, Yasir Suleiman does something that is quite rare in modern linguistics: he attempts to impose new terminology, not merely by defining new concepts (which is commonplace), but by creating new terms in the language he analyzes to fit the English ones that he wishes to use. Specifically, he views the English terms mother tongue and native language, which most of us would say are synonymous with one another, as two distinct entities: the former applying to Arabic vernaculars and the latter to Standard Arabic. I find Suleiman's ‘new conceptualization’ to be artificial and misleading.
I also doubt that Suleiman's interpretation of ‘folk linguistics’ is consistent with that of Nancy Niedzielski and Dennis Preston (Suleiman cites their Reference Niedzielski and Preston2000 book, p. 266). Niedzielski and Preston have established a subfield of sociolinguistics that measures very carefully, using discrete methodologies, speakers' perceptions on language. In contrast, Suleiman posits folk linguistics as diametrical, or at best complementary, to ‘empirical investigation and model building’ (p. 266). Preston (Reference Preston1999:xxiv–xxv) lays out folk linguistics as an endeavor just as empirical and just as much about model building as any other in sociolinguistics. Suleiman, by contrast, with one questionable exception (which involves fifty illiterate Muslim female speakers of Arabic in Amman, Jordan, p. 267) relies predominantly on his own perception of speakers' perceptions on Arabic.
The chapter on ‘Dialectology’, by Peter Behnstedt & Manfred Woidich, is careful to preface that it only deals with ‘dialects of Arabic that have native speakers' (n. 2, p. 300), thus excluding Standard Arabic (in both its modern and classical incarnations). The chapter includes a useful history of Arabic dialectology, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. It enumerates various journals, book series, and even conferences devoted to the field, which they argue has grown from a hobby of sorts for scholars of Middle East and Islamic studies to an academic enterprise of its own. Behnstedt & Woidich give a nod to ‘sociolinguistics and variationist linguistics’ (p. 304), which began treating Arabic dialects in this relatively new framework in the 1980s.
One may also discern from reading this chapter that proper sociolinguistic studies of Arabic aside, Traditional Arabic Dialectology (TAD) has itself evolved and now shares some of the methodological attributes used in modern (socio)linguistics, for example, accounting for variation within a given dialect, inter alia through data collection of a representative sample of the community. Some of the scholarly outcomes of contemporary TAD are also tangential to those of sociolinguistics. Examples include the consideration of (a limited set of) social factors, descriptions of dialect clusters that are less than monolithic, and historical-comparative works that bridge the gap between ‘pure’ historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Yet, much of TAD is still, indeed, quite traditional, with descriptive treatises of single dialects, maps and atlases covering the realm of dialect geography (though today's atlases are much more sophisticated and elaborate than those of a century ago), and lexica.
In a chapter succinctly entitled ‘History’, Jonathan Owens, the editor of the handbook (whose introduction to the volume is also a very interesting read), advocates a more cross-linguistic approach to studying the history of Arabic, in line with his own monograph on the linguistic history of Arabic (Owens Reference Owens2009). Most crucially, Owens laments that historical linguists of Arabic have for the most part ignored the methodology prevalent in (e.g. Indo-European) historical linguistics, namely the Comparative Method. He touches upon such issues as ‘Arabic among the Semitic languages’, the use of ‘Old Arabic sources’ and ultimately, ‘reconstruction’ of various linguistic ‘entities’. The question he poses, ‘What entities are to be reconstructed’, is in accord with another chapter in the handbook, ‘What is Arabic?’, by Jan Retsö. Owens also delves into ‘General issues of historical linguistics’ pertinent to Arabic, for example, types of linguistic change and the role of contact in the chronology of the language. In his conclusion to the chapter, Owens argues, ‘Arabic should have a privileged place within historical linguistics’ (p. 469).
This last statement by Owens may, in fact, be the motto of the entire handbook. I would venture to say that most of the chapters (and this includes chapters I have not included in this review) depart from the traditional treatment of Arabic as a unique language, which cannot or should not be analyzed using the modern tools of general linguistics. In a way, the message may be even more radical than that: rather than merely applying general linguistic theories and methods to Arabic, the authors illustrate how Arabic linguistics can be used to inform linguistic theories, thanks to the abundance of data available encompassing multiple varieties of the language, which are used synchronically across a rather large region, yet maintain some degree of mutual intelligibility.
The handbook is an excellent resource for students and scholars of Arabic and general linguistics at virtually all levels. Its chapters can be assigned as required or recommended reading in nearly every class that deals with the topics of its chapters. For more advanced readers, the chapters themselves may not suffice, yet they open the door to further investigation in the sources that they reference. The book has two useful indices: one of names (including such diverse persons as sociolinguist Penelope Eckert, Lebanese folk singer Fayrūz, and medieval grammarian Zamaxšari) and one of subjects.
The book is produced at the high quality expected of the publisher, with the exception of some inconsistencies (even within single chapters) in transcription notation for Arabic names and words, as well as in spelling (British vs. American). An eBook version is available in addition to the hardback I have reviewed, but unfortunately it is merely one cent cheaper.
