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Patterns of communal language variation in Bahrain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Clive D. Holes
Clive D. Holes
Affiliation:
University of Salford, England
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Abstract

The Arabic-speaking speech communities of the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain are undergoing a special kind of sociolinguistic change which requires the recognition of both dialectal and supradialectal prestige systems. Variation can be accounted for in terms of the articulation/conflict of these two systems. Although it appears at first sight that all of the observed variation could be explained at the phonological level, a closer analysis of the data suggests that, psycholinguistically and sociolinguistically, a lexical explanation fits part of it better. (Variation studies, standard and nonstandard languages)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 433 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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