Enregistering the Badawī Dialect in Jāzān, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study uses the concept of enregisterment to trace the development and construction of the Badawī dialect in Harūb, Jāzān, Saudi Arabia. The analysis shows that the salient linguistic feature ch used in Harūb has become enregistered with Badu identity in terms of ideologies of linguistic differentiation. This paper is an ethnographic study that explores the meaning of Badu which has been localized to the Jāzān region. The historical and social processes of isolation, modernization and marginalization have given rise to discursive practices of naming and drawing boundaries around ways of speaking in Jāzān. Finally, this paper highlights the ideological nature of language and calls for more studies in Arabic linguistics to consider the “total linguistic fact”.

Keywords:

• Arabic dialects
• enregisterment
• language ideologies
• indexicality
• Saudi Arabia
• Jazan
• Harub
• Badu

Notes

1 Johnstone, “Ideology and Discourse in the Enregisterment of Regional Variation”, in Auer et al. (eds), Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives (2013), pp. 107–27; Blommaert and Rampton, “Language and Superdiversity”, in Arnaut et al. (eds), Language and Superdiversity (2016), pp. 21–48; Jørgensen et al., “Polylanguaging in Superdiversity”, Diversities 13.2 (December 2011), pp. 147–164; Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideologies and Linguistic Differentiation”, in Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of Language Ideologies, Polities, and Identities (2000), pp. 35–84.

2 Ibid.

3 Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideologies and Linguistic Differentiation”; and Schieffelin et al. (eds), Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (1988).

4 Agha, “The Social Life of Cultural Value”, Language and Communication 23.3–4 (July 2003), pp. 231–273.

5 The words Badu, Badawī,and Ḥaḍarī are italicized in this paper to highlight their use according to the way people in Jāzān use these words rather than how they are defined in the dictionary.

6 Johnstone, “Enregistering Dialect”, Enregisterment: Zur Sozialen Bedeutung Sprachlicher Variation 8 (2017), pp. 15–28.

7 Bedaya TV, Zid Raṣīdik 95 Lahjāt Minṭaqat Jāzān (2017).

8 Hamdi, “Phonological Aspects of Jizani Arabic”, International Journal of Language and Linguistics 2 (2015), pp. 91–94.

9 Alqahtani, A Sociolinguistic Study of the Tihami Qahtani Dialect in Asir, Southern Arabia, PhD thesis (2015); and Asiri, “Remarks on the Dialect of Rijal Alma’ (South-West Saudi Arabia)”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 99 (2009), pp. 9–21.

10 General Authority for Statistics, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, “Dalīl Al-Ḫadamāt as-sādis ʿashar 2017 m Minṭaqat Jāzān” (2017).

11 Hafez and Slyomovics, Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the New Millennium (2013), p. 146.

12 This is not to say that others in Harūb did not know their genealogy. This statement only applies to the people I spoke with.

13 Weir, A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen (2007).

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Maisel, “The New Rise of Tribalism in Saudi Arabia”, Nomadic Peoples 18.2 (2014), pp. 100–122.

17 General Authority for Statistics, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

18 Habib, Development of Agriculture in Tihama: Regional Growth and Development in the Jizan Region, Saudi Arabia, PhD diss. (1988).

19 General Authority for Statistics, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

20 Agha, “The Social Life”; Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideologies and Linguistic Differentiation”; Johnstone, “Ideology and Discourse”; and Silverstein, “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life”, Language & Communication 23.3–4 (2003), pp. 193–229.

21 Names have been changed to preserve anonymity.

22 Silverstein, “Indexical Order”.

23 Labov, Sociolinguistic Patterns (1972), p. 180.

24 Holes, “Kashkasha and the Fronting and Affricization of the Velar Stops Revisited: A Contribution to the Historical Phonology of the Peninsular Arabic Dialects”, in Kaye (ed.), Sematic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau (1991), pp. 652–678; Retso, “Kaškaša, T-Passives and the Ancient Dialects in Arabia”, Oriente Moderno 19.80 (2000), pp. 111–118.

25 I used IPA symbols to transcribe the ḍād and ḏ̣āʾ in order to illustrate the sound merger.

26 Maisel, “The New Rise of Tribalism”.

27 Ghanam in Harūb means goats.

28 Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideologies and Linguistic Differentiation”.

29 Eckert, “Variation and the Indexical Field”, Journal of Sociolinguistics 12.4 (2008), pp. 453–76.

30 Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideologies and Linguistic Differentiation”.

31 Chambers and Trudgill, Dialectology (1998), p. 4.

32 Agha, “The Social Life of Cultural Value”.

33 Arishi, Towards a Development Strategy: The Role of Small Towns in Urbanization and Rural Development Planning in the Jizan Province, Saudi Arabia, PhD thesis (1991).

34 Gingrich, “Trading Autonomy for Integration: Some Observations on Twentieth-Century Relations between the Rijāl Alma’ Tribe and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”, Études Rurales 155–156 (2000), pp. 78–79.

35 Habib, Development of Agriculture, p. 144.

36 Holes, “Kashkasha and the Fronting and Affricization”; Retso, “Kaškaša, T-Passives and the Ancient Dialects”.

37 Ibid.

38 Johnstone, Andrus, and Danielson, “Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of ‘Pittsburghese’”, Journal of English Linguistics 34.2 (2006), pp. 77–104 .

39 Silverstein, “Language and the Culture of Gender: At the Intersection of Structure, Usage, and Ideology”, in Mertz and Parmentier (eds), Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives (1985), pp. 219–259.

40 Peutz, “Bedouin ‘Abjection’: World Heritage, Worldliness, and Worthiness at the Margins of Arabia”, American Ethnologist 38.2 (2011), pp. 338–360.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julie Lowry

Julie Lowry is an independent researcher in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, [email protected].