Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Migrant Workers’ Varieties of Arabic in Hijaz, Madinah: Pidgin or Interlanguage Varieties?(Newcastle University, 2024-06-17) Bazerbay, Abrar; Pichler, Heike; Duncan, DanielThis thesis investigates whether the Arabic L2 varieties spoken by 30 Madinah-based migrant workers, who have Bengali, Hindi-Urdu or Tagalog as their L1, are pidgin or interlanguage varieties. To answer this research question, I first examine the verbal and nominal agreements in the speech of three migrant workers. I then investigate in detail the impact of a series of internal and external factors on the use of the definite article /ʔal-/ ‘the’, the coordinating conjunction marker /wa/ ‘and’, the production of /f/ in the speech of all 30 migrant workers in the corpus. I hypothesise that the migrant workers’ Arabic L2 can be considered a pidgin variety if the following apply: they have reduced verbal and nominal systems; they typically delete the morphosyntactic features and substitute /f/ with other variants; contextual predictors negligibly impact their L2 production; and their Arabic L2 is simplified compared to Hijazi Arabic (HA), the local variety of Arabic. However, if their use of the morphological features follows the usage patterns of L1 HA speakers and their use of morphosyntactic and phological features is significantly conditioned by contextual factors, the migrant workers’ Arabic L2 can be considered interlanguage varieties. Data were collected by way of one-hour semi-structured Zoom interviews and questionnaires. The questionnaires included a series of demographic information, questions concerning the participants' use and acquisition of Arabic and attitudinal information. The qualitative analysis of targeted morphological features reveals that the Arabic speech of the three migrants lacks both subject-verb agreement and noun-adjective-agreement. This result possibly supports the pidgin hypothesis. The quantitative analysis shows that while the examined linguistic features are employed categorically in L1 HA, they are used variably in the migrants' L2 varieties. Mixedeffect logistic regression models show that the migrant workers in my sample overwhelmingly delete the morphosyntactic features, with most of the independent variables not significantly affecting their use. The variations across various linguistic variables and throughout various language groups suggest that the L2 Arabic spoken by the migrants represent an interlanguage. With the phonological feature /f/, the impact of migrants' L1 becomes apparent, and the use of this variable is significantly affected by the independent variables included in the modelling. Hence, these findings suggest that the migrants’ Arabic L2s are interlanguage varieties. ii The analysis of morphological features and the analysis of morphosyntactic and phonological features point towards opposite conclusions. I tentatively propose that the Arabic varieties of the migrant workers studied in this thesis are located on a continuum, where the higher end may be closer to an interlanguage.32 0Item Restricted Teaching Arabic in the Diaspora(Saudi Digital Library, 2023) Bahhari, Abdulwdood Hassan; Manns, Howard; Willoughy, LouisaAs a pluricentric language with strong religious connection, teaching Arabic in the diaspora comes with unique challenges. This thesis explores the teaching and learning of Arabic in Australia and how schoolteachers and parents negotiate the competing imperatives to teach Fus-ha (the HV) and Ammiyya (the LV), to balance the need to teach religious literacy skills and secular conversational skills to Muslim learners. These learners encompass both traditional heritage language learners but also students from non-Arabic backgrounds, who learn Arabic for religious purposes. As such, this thesis challenges and extends our understanding of “heritage language learning” in Australia, and interrogates how different school settings approach these mixed ability cohorts. The thesis is underpinned by and extends Woods’ (2004) Language-Religion- Ideology (LRI) framework. The special status of Arabic and Islam means that in the Islamic context, the two linguistic ends of the continuum are not English vs the religious language, but rather is Fus-ha vs both varieties. Drawing on this, I explore how parents and teachers in four school contexts view this relationship. These contexts are Islamic schools, government after-hours schools, community language schools, and Quranic schools. Drawing on survey and interviews from 31 Arabic teachers and 84 parents who have school-aged children learning Arabic in Australia, I address the following research questions. Firstly, what are the similarities and differences in the approach taken to Arabic teaching in each school sector? Secondly, how do teachers in different sectors approach variety choice, and the teaching of Arabic more generally? Thirdly, what are parents' views about variety/choice and the purpose of Arabic teaching? Fourthly and finally, to what extent are parents and teachers in each sector aligned in their views on how and why Arabic should be taught? As one might expect, a major finding from the thesis is that schools in different sectors differ in their approach to teaching Arabic and variety of choice, according to their religious orientation. The more religiously-oriented the school is, the more focus on Fus-ha there will be, while the more secular the school is, the more focus on both varieties is evident. For example, Quranic schools were found to be at one end of Woods’ (2004) continuum with the strongest link to the religion and the highest teaching of Fus-ha. On the other side of the continuum comes government after-hours schools with the weakest link to the religion and Abstract 3 the highest emphasis on both varieties. In between fall Islamic schools and community language schools, with Islamic schools showing a stronger link to the religion and greater use of Fus-ha than community language schools. Perhaps surprisingly, however, parents showed a more complex LRI relationship. While a minority of parents shared the focus on Fus-ha in Quranic and Islamic schools, the majority strongly advocated for the teaching of both varieties – regardless of the school context, in which their children were enrolled – or whether their family are heritage speakers. As well, teachers and parents in all settings discussed the tensions between desire to teach the language for religious or communicative purposes, but findings show parents often wanted a greater emphasis on Ammiyya and communication than the school was offering. When taken together, these findings suggest that Arabic schools in Australia would benefit from rebalancing their curricula to better meet the needs and expectation of their parent community.63 0Item Restricted Intra-ethnic variation in the English spoken by Iraqi Arabs in London and Glasgow: A sociophonetic study(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-06-19) Alasiri, Ebtehal Ali; Stuart-Smith, Jane; Smith, JenniferOver the last two decades, the UK has received a massive influx of immigrants who are diverse not only in terms of their ethnic and religious backgrounds but also in their migration routes and experience (Vertovec, 2007). Such differences play a key role in the socio-economic and demographic stratification within and across ethnic communities, and by implication, the speak- ers’ sociolinguistic behaviour. However, little attention has been given to the possible impact of migration routes and experience on sociophonetic variations within and across ethnic com- munities. Most of the related research on ethnic communities has been largely concentrated on South-Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities that came to the UK through similar channels of migration. Additionally, little work on ethnic accents of English has directly examined ethnic regional varieties of English (though cf. Wong and Hall-Lew, 2014; Wormald, 2016). The Iraqi community in the UK exhibits waves of migration, with different migration routes to different locations. This thesis explores the sociophonetic variation within forcibly displaced (refugees) and professional Iraqi- Arab migrants in London and Glasgow, who despite commonalities, are socioeconomically stratified. It focuses on the patterns of variation in the production of English laterals and positive voice onset time (VOT) of stops, which are produced differently in London and Glaswegian English as well as Iraqi Arabic (Al-Ani, 1970; Stuart-Smith, 2004; Wells, 1982b). Using a variationist sociolinguistic framework, 44 first-generation Iraqi Arab speakers, aged 40-70 and stratified by migration experience, dialect and gender, were recorded reading target words in a carrier phrase and completed an acculturation questionnaire. English positive VOT durations and laterals’ degree of clearness/darkness were measured and analysed acoustically. The effects of linguistic, macro- and micro-social factors on English stops’ VOT duration and F2-F1 Hz of the laterals were statistically analysed. Iraqi English variation was conditioned by regional dialect and migration experience. These factors also interact, and with gender, to affect VOT and lateral production patterns. Moreover, Iraqi speakers who reported integration attitudes and behaviour within and outwith the community showed monolingual-like production patterns, highlighting the importance of considering speakers’ identification and involvement with both their ethnic and national communities to better understand and interpret their sociolinguistic behaviour.15 0