Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted A Sociolinguistic Study of Language Attitudes Towards the Elawi Dialect in AlUla in Saudi Arabia(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-11-16) Albalawi, Arwa; Bailey, GeorgeThis study investigates language attitudes towards the Elawi dialect, which is a local variety spoken in AlUla in Saudi Arabia. The Elawi dialect provides an apposite context for sociolinguistic studies due to its rich linguistic variability, particularly from a lexical perspective. The study aims to explore how the Elawi dialect speakers evaluate the local variant of the second-person feminine singular object/possessive pronoun [-ʃ] and the local variants of the “hurry”, “what”, and “why” variables. In addition, the current study investigates whether female and male, younger and older Elawi dialect speakers differ in their perceptions of the local variants and supra-local variants. To achieve this aim, quantitative and qualitative data were collected using a matched-guise perception experiment, a self-report task, and open-ended questions. The results of this investigation showed that all speakers of the Elawi dialect – female and male, younger and older – perceived the local variants as less prestigious compared to the supra-local variants, contrary to what was expected. It was hypothesised that only female and younger subjects would perceive the supra-local variants positively, whereas male and older subjects would perceive the local variants positively. The hypotheses were inferred mainly from production studies because exploring Saudi dialects from a perceptual perspective has received little attention compared to the production field. It has been suggested that not all patterns observed in production studies seem to be reflected in perception findings. The results also revealed what seems to be a shared consensus among the Elawi dialect speakers on awareness of the Elawi dialect features and the indexical meanings that they associate with these features, suggesting their salience. In general, the present investigation has implications for understanding several theoretical concepts, including implicit and explicit attitudes, indexicality, and salience.15 0