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Phonological Variation and Change in Immigrant Speech : a Sociolinguistic Study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli War Immigrant Speech Community in Damascus, Syria

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Phonological Variation and Change in Immigrant Speech : a Sociolinguistic Study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli War Immigrant Speech Community in Damascus, Syria Durham E-Theses Phonological variation and change in immigrant speech : A sociolinguistic study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli war immigrant speech community in Damascus, Syria. Jassem, Zaidan Ali How to cite: Jassem, Zaidan Ali (1987) Phonological variation and change in immigrant speech : A sociolinguistic study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli war immigrant speech community in Damascus, Syria., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1682/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE IN IMMIGRANT SPEECH A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF A 1967 ARAB-ISRAELI WAR IMMIGRANT SPEECH COMMUNITY IN DAMASCUS, SYRIA. by Zaidan Ali Jassem (B. A. in English, Damascus; Diploma of the Higher Studies in English, Damascus; M. A. in Applied Linguistics, Durham) July 1987 A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Medieval Literature at the University of Durham, England. i ýýý ýý1 JAN. bismilla: hi r-ra2ma: ni r-ra2i: m In the Name of Allah, the Benificent, the Merciful 'wa min aya: tihi: xalqu 1-sama: wa: ti wa-larDi, waxtila: fu ? alsinatikum wa-? alwa: nikum, ?inna fi: dha: lika la-? aya: tin lil-3a: limi: n. ' (Holy Quran XXX (Al-Room 'The Romans'): 22. (Amongst His signs are the creation of the heavens and the earth and the differences of your languages and colours; in this there, surely, are landmarks for the well-learned. ) (My translation) i ABSTRACT Zaidan Ali Jassem. Phonological Variation and Change in Immigrant Speech: A Sociolinguistic Study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli War Immigrant Speech Community in Damascus, Syria. Ph. D. Thesis (University of Durham). 1987. This thesis follows the theoretical framework of the variable paradigm (Labov 1966, 1972a; Trudgill 1974; etc. ) and is one of very few dissertations that is concerned with the investigation of immigrant speech patterns (Payne 1976,1980; Bortoni-Ricardo 1985; Kerswill 1985). It attempts to describe the sociolinguistic situation of one immigrant speech community, known as al - FaD1, who have been living in the District of Damascus including the City itself, after their forced expulsion from their motherland, the Golan Heights, by the occupying Israeli forces in June 1967. The immigrants' speech situation involves three dialects, namely, one standard, and two vernaculars: i. e. the immigrants' own vernacular which they brought with them from the Golan Heights, and the local vernacular of the host areas. The immigrants variably utilize the three dialects in their everyday communications with one another and with other speakers especially those of the host areas. The predominant use of one variety rather than another largely depends on social and stylistic constraints. While previous immigrant sociolinguistic studies have relied on the standard Labovian framework in interviewing informants and eliciting speech styles despite its criticisms and limitations (see Bell 1984; Wolfson 1976), the sociolinguistic speech repertoire of the immigrants in this study cannot be fully captured by the usual Labovian methodology as they were observed to adapt and switch their speech according to whether they conversed with speakers of (a) immigrant speech or (b) local speech. In the former, the immigrants' own vernacular was dominant and in the latter the local vernacular was switched to to a greater extent by most speakers. As the questionnaire -based interview is very limited in its capacity to obtain this type of speech accommodation, the immigrants were, therefore, recorded in non-questionnaire-based, free or open interviews or sessions. This mainly involved recording each immigrant informant with an immigrant and a local speaker, though separately. All in all, four speech styles were isolated: immigrant - to - immigrant style (LLS), immigrant - to-local style (ILS), word list style (WLS), and Quranic recitation styles (QRS), the latter being administered to illiterate speakers only who were asked to read some Quranic verses from their memory. The judgement sample consisted of 38 immigrant informants divided by education, sex, age, and area. Also 9 local informants were included, for comparative purposes. Eight linguistic variables which comprised seven phonetic variables and one related morpho-phonemic vairable were analyzed. The results arrived at can be summarized as follows. The linguistic analysis of the effect of the conditioning environment on the alternation among the immigrant, local and standard speech forms has shown that, for all the phonetic variables, it is lexically constrained in the same manner that holds for lexical diffusion (Wang 1969, etc. ) which it strongly supports. The morpho-phonemic variable was not found to be subject to any linguistic constraints. Sociolinguistically, one's educational status correlated with language shift in a way such that the higher the educational level the greater the movement away from the original immigrant vernacular towards especially the local vernacular. The next highest-status group displayed not only hypercorrection in their speech behaviour but also undercorrection and underdiscorrection which are of related function. The acquisition of and shift to the local vernacular was mainly observed in and practised by the young and by almost none at all by the old. The adoption of the local speech forms was led women of the young group while sex was unimportant for the old group. Also women, unlike men, were found to minimize or lack social stratification altogether. Stylistically, the immigrant speech forms were favoured greatly by all the immigrants in their by conversations with one another whereas the local speech forms were greatly favoured in all the immigrants, except for the old and the young non -educated males, their The conversations with the locals. Women, in particular, adapted their speech the most. standard speech forms were categorical in WLS and QRS for almost all of the variables and the informants. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks should first go to the University of Tishreen, Lattakia, Syria, for sponsoring my postgraduate studies for the Master's and doctoral programs. Thanks are also due to the UK's ORS Committee for their difference-covering tuition fee awards of 1985 and 1986, the latter being unavailed due to the part-time status of this study when it was conferred. I am indebted to my supervisor, Professor Charles Jones, for his friendly encouragement, moral support and linguistic insights. I benefitted from his phonological thinking a great deal. Professor Jim Milroy, Head of the Department of Linguistics at Sheffield University, read a sample draft of one of the variables to whom I am indebted for his interest in and encouragement of my work as well as for his criticisms and remarks which have been incorporated in this thesis. To my informants, whose identities remain anonymous, I owe more than I can express. Their co-operation in this project as well as their hospitality, generosity, kindness and friendliness have overwhelmed me in a way which no suitable words can better describe. I greatly benefitted from talking to and discussing many things with them often in a very warm-hearted atmosphere over a very nice 'cup of tea or coffee'. I hope that my work should stand in recognition of their efforts which they have put into it in the form of raw and innocent speech data which they did not know how it was going to be utilized. My indebtedness to them all is beyond what words can express. To my parents, brothers Ghazi, Zaid, Jassem, Abdullah and Mohammad, and sisters Hamda, Sab2a, Thnaiya, Ghazza, and Ghaziyya, I am indebted more than anyone else. They provided me with accommodation, food, love, warmth, affection, and prayer on which I had to depend during most of my stay away from them. Ghazi, Zaid, Jassem, Abdullah and Ghaziyya helped in the naming and recruitment of some informants. I am indebted to Ghazi for c onvincing two of his friends to co-operate in the recordings after they initially rejected to do so. My friends M ohammad Hamad Husain, Jassem Mohammad Mohammad, and Abdulkareem Husain were also very helpful and supportive to whom I owe many tha nks. I had many illuminating discussions with Abdulkareem, an iii intelligent scholar of Arabic at Damascus University although he refused to co - operate in the project materially, whether in the recruitment of informants or in other field work-related matters. Finally, I am grateful for Mrs Krystyna Stenhouse for her excellent typing of the thesis. iv Dedication This work is warmly dedicated to my parents, Ali and Hasna, and brothers, Ghazi, Abdullah, and Mohammad in recognition of their love and support in every possible way. V List of Phonetic Symbols Although the IPA notation as outlined in Gimson (1980) has been systematically followed, a number of phonetic symbols have been modified for typewriting purposes. These are as follows: (i) Vowels indicates vowel length. E. g. Arabic /ka: n/ 'was', English /si: / 'see'.
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