The politics of written language in the Arab world : writing change / edited by Jacob Hoigilt, Gunvor Mejdell.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction / Jacob Høigilt and Gunvor Mejdell -- A Language for the People?: Quantitative Indicators of Written dārija and ͑āmmiyya in Cairo and Rabat / Kristian Takvam Kindt and Tewodros Aragie Kebede -- Diglossia as Ideology / Kristen Brustad -- Changing Norms, Concepts and Practices of Written Arabic: A ‘Long Distance’ Perspective / Gunvor Mejdell -- Contemporary dārija Writings in Morocco: Ideology and Practices / Catherine Miller -- Morocco: An Informal Passage to Literacy in dārija (Moroccan Arabic) / Dominique Caubet -- Adab sākhir (Satirical Literature) and the Use of Egyptian Vernacular / Eva Marie Håland -- Dialect with an Attitude: Language and Criticism in New Egyptian Print Media / Jacob Høigilt -- Writing Oral and Literary Culture: The Case of the Contemporary Moroccan zajal / Alexander Elinson -- The Politics of Pro-͑āmmiyya Language Ideology in Egypt / Mariam Aboelezz -- Moralizing Stances Discursive Play and Ideologies of Language and Gender in Moroccan Digital Discourse / Atiqa Hachimi -- The Language of Online Activism: A Case from Kuwait / Jon Nordenson -- The Oralization of Writing: Argumentation, Profanity and Literacy in Cyberspace / Emad Abdul Latif -- Index.

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The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World connects the fascinating field of contemporary written Arabic with the central sociolinguistic notions of language ideology and diglossia. Focusing on Egypt and Morocco, the authors combine large-scale survey data on language attitudes with in-depth analyses of actual language usage and explicit (and implicit) language ideology. They show that writing practices as well as language attitudes in Egypt and Morocco are far more receptive to vernacular forms than has been assumed. The individual chapters cover a wide variety of media, from books and magazines to blogs and Tweets. A central theme running through the contributions is the social and political function of “doing informality” in a changing public sphere steadily more permeated by written Arabic in a number of media. The e-book version of this publication is available in Open Access .

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