A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE BANI MALIK DIALECT IN MECCA, SAUDI ARABIA

Abstract

My research aims to examine how the dialect of the Bani Malik community, a minority group in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, has been influenced by its contact with the urban dialect of Mecca. It also aims to record Bani Malik speakers’ attitudes toward their heritage dialect. Thirty-six Bani Malik speakers of different age groups, genders, and amounts of contact with Meccan speakers were interviewed for 30 minutes each. Quantitative data analysis was used to investigate the influence of the Meccan dialect on one Bani Malik morphological feature, the first-person singular possessive marker <-i:h>, and two phonological features, the diphthongs [ai] and [aw], while qualitative data analysis was used to record some of the most salient features of the Bani Malik dialect and Bani Malik speakers’ attitudes toward their heritage dialect. IBM SPSS was used to analyze the quantitative data, and the results showed that there is a change led by younger Bani Malik dialect speakers who have high contact with Meccan speakers. The gender of the participants was found to be statistically insignificant, unlike their age and contact amount with the Meccan dialect. The qualitative data analysis for the participants’ attitudes toward the Bani Malik dialect showed that the majority of the Bani Malik dialect speakers (72.22%) have positive attitudes toward their dialect, 16.67% of the participants have negative attitudes toward their dialect, and 11.11% of them have neutral attitudes toward their dialect, believing that it is a regular dialect similar to any other dialect in society. Together, the quantitative data analysis results and the qualitative data analysis results indicate that change can be inevitable when a minority dialect is in a high constant contact with a major and more dominant dialect, despite the positive attitudes the speakers of the minority dialect have toward their dialect.