DOCSLIB.ORG

Language Attitudes of Iraqi Native Speakers of Arabic: a Sociolinguistic Investigation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Language Attitudes of Iraqi Native Speakers of Arabic: a Sociolinguistic Investigation LANGUAGE ATTITUDES OF IRAQI NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ARABIC: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC INVESTIGATION by Mohammed Kamil Murad Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and the Faculty of Graduate School of the University of Kansas In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s of Arts Committee: _____________________________ Chair: Arienne M. Dwyer _____________________________ Member: Naima Boussofara Omar _____________________________ Member: Harold Torrence Date Defended: April 19, 2007 The Thesis Committee certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: LANGUAGE ATTITUDES OF IRAQI NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ARABIC: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC INVESTIGATION Committee: _____________________________ Chair: Arienne M. Dwyer _____________________________ Member: Naima Boussofara Omar _____________________________ Member: Harold Torrence Date approved: May 1, 2007 ii ABSTRACT LANGUAGE ATTITUDES OF IRAQI NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ARABIC: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC INVESTIGATION by Mohammed K. Murad Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Arienne M. Dwyer Department of Anthropology This study investigates language attitudes of Iraqi native speakers of Arabic towards two Arabic varieties in Iraq, Standard Arabic (SA) and Iraqi Arabic (IA). The sample of the study comprises 196 participants divided into 107 college students and 89 non-students with no post-secondary degree. The instrument used in the study is a language survey of 44 questions falling into five groups, language preference and use in social interaction, language preference in media, language preference and use in the academic domain, language ideology, and Open-ended questions. The findings showed that the differences in language attitudes between students and non-students were significant, i.e. students showed more favorable attitudes towards SA than IA, whereas non-students overwhelmingly preferred IA. No significant gender-based differences were found among participants. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Arienne Dwyer for her invaluable guidance, advice, and encouragement. Her meticulous editing, ideas, and suggestions were a great source of inspiration and help. My deep appreciation also goes to Dr. Naima Omar for her support and guidance. The comments she made and the references she recommended were of significant importance for this research. I owe much to Dr. Harold Torrence for his sharp comments and suggestions. His invaluable insights, continuous encouragement, and constructive criticism made this study better than it would have been otherwise. I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to Dr. Patricia Hawley for teaching me important concepts in statistics that helped me perform the statistical analyses in this research. Sitting as a student in Hawley’s statistics class was a great experience through which I learned a great deal of interesting and invaluable information. To Geoff Husic, I owe special thanks for his incredible assistance especially in time of difficulty. He has been overwhelmingly generous with his time and support. Geoff’s detailed reviewing of my writing contributed valuably to this work. I am also grateful to Dr. Neil Salkind for his useful advice and help. I am not less grateful to Dr. Mark Nesbitt-Daly who has reviewed my writing and generously offered a very helpful and constructive input. iv I am very much indebted to my close friend Thaer Jawad. Thaer did a wonderful and remarkable contribution in the data-collection process. Without Thaer’s assistance, completing this research would have been practically impossible. I am much indebted to Julie Steinbach for her great cooperation in coding and entering the data into Excel and SPSS. Without her help, I would have spent much more time working on my data. To Wendy Herd, I would like to express my gratitude for her valuable assistance and helpful suggestions. Of the many others to whom I am indebted and owe gratitude, I would like to mention Mickey Waxman, Jeffrey Lewis, Sara Kanning, and Kathy Pribbenow from the Instructional Services in the University of Kansas. They lectured excellent series of workshops that deal with various technical issues of high importance for any student doing graduate research. My love and gratitude also goes to the University of Kansas for embracing me as a graduate student for two years. My experience at the University of Kansas will be memorable for many years to come. I would like to express thanks to the faculty of the Department of Linguistics where I learned immeasurable and interesting information about language and language research. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, sisters, and brothers for their love and support. v DEDICATION To my family and all my friends who are caught in the violence that turned Iraq into a battlefield. vi CONTENTS ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................... iv DEDICATION............................................................................................................. vi CONTENTS................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................ x LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER ONE ........................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Purpose................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Research Questions............................................................................................. 2 1.3 Structure of Study ............................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER TWO .......................................................................................................... 4 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE .............................................................................. 4 2.1 What is Attitude? ................................................................................................ 4 2.2 Language Attitude and its Importance................................................................ 5 2.3 Standard Arabic vs. Iraqi Arabic ...................................................................... 10 2.4 Arabic variation and attitudes in the Arab World............................................. 16 2.4 Educational Level and Language Attitude........................................................ 25 2.5 Language and Gender ....................................................................................... 32 2.6 Language Attitudes: General Trends ................................................................ 33 CHAPTER THREE .................................................................................................... 37 METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................... 37 3.1 Research Hypothesis and Variables.................................................................. 37 3.2 Participants........................................................................................................ 38 3.3 Survey ............................................................................................................... 40 vii 3.3.1 First Group: Social Interaction................................................................... 40 3.3.2 Second Group: Language Preference in Media ......................................... 41 3.3.3 Third Group: Language in Education ........................................................ 42 3.3.4 Fourth Group: Language Ideology............................................................. 43 3.3.5 Fifth Group: Open-ended Questions.......................................................... 43 3.4 Procedures......................................................................................................... 44 3.5 Analysis of the Data.......................................................................................... 45 CHAPTER FOUR....................................................................................................... 47 RESULTS ................................................................................................................... 47 4.1 Language Preference......................................................................................... 50 4.2 Language Use.................................................................................................... 52 4.3 Language Preference and Gender ..................................................................... 54 4.4 Language Use and Gender................................................................................ 56 4.5 Student Majors.................................................................................................. 58 4.5.1 Language Preference according to Student Majors ................................... 58 4.5.2 Language Use according to Student Majors .............................................. 60 4.6 Language Ideology...........................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Phonological Variation and Change in Mesopotamiaː
    Phonological variation and change in Mesopotamiaː A study of accent levelling in the Arabic dialect of Mosul. Abdulkareem Yaseen Ahmed Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics) School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences Newcastle University October 2018 Dedication To My Heart, soul & life Hussein, Yaseen & Yousif Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors Dr Ghada Khattab and Dr Damien Hall for their continuous support of my PhD study and related research, for their patience, honesty and immense knowledge. Their guidance over the last few years helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I would like to thank the following people for their kind support and help throughout my study: Dr Jalal Al-Tamimi and Dr Danielle Turton for their very helpful comments and suggestions on various things of the study. I would also like to thank Daniel Ezra Johnson for his support in conducting the statistics in this study. My sincere thanks to my colleague Maha Jasim who helped in many things especially checking the segmentation of the data. Very special ‘Merci’ goes to Maelle Amand for her immense help. I would also to thank all the people of Mosul and others who helped in various capacities in this study, particularly Ahmed Salama, Khalid Ibrahim Alahmed and Ekhlas Muhsin and Dhiaa Kareem. An everlasting ‘Thank You’ goes to Rosalie Maggio, Janet Atwill and Annabelle Lukin. I would also like to acknowledge the support of HCED (Iraq) for sponsoring my studies, without which this work would not have been possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies
    Arabic and its Alternatives Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies Editorial Board Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA) Bernard Heyberger (EHESS, Paris, France) VOLUME 5 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cjms Arabic and its Alternatives Religious Minorities and Their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East (1920–1950) Edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg Karène Sanchez Summerer Tijmen C. Baarda LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Assyrian School of Mosul, 1920s–1930s; courtesy Dr. Robin Beth Shamuel, Iraq. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murre-van den Berg, H. L. (Hendrika Lena), 1964– illustrator. | Sanchez-Summerer, Karene, editor. | Baarda, Tijmen C., editor. Title: Arabic and its alternatives : religious minorities and their languages in the emerging nation states of the Middle East (1920–1950) / edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Karène Sanchez, Tijmen C. Baarda. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Christians and Jews in Muslim societies, 2212–5523 ; vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Different Dialects of Arabic Language
    e-ISSN : 2347 - 9671, p- ISSN : 2349 - 0187 EPRA International Journal of Economic and Business Review Vol - 3, Issue- 9, September 2015 Inno Space (SJIF) Impact Factor : 4.618(Morocco) ISI Impact Factor : 1.259 (Dubai, UAE) DIFFERENT DIALECTS OF ARABIC LANGUAGE ABSTRACT ifferent dialects of Arabic language have been an Dattraction of students of linguistics. Many studies have 1 Ali Akbar.P been done in this regard. Arabic language is one of the fastest growing languages in the world. It is the mother tongue of 420 million in people 1 Research scholar, across the world. And it is the official language of 23 countries spread Department of Arabic, over Asia and Africa. Arabic has gained the status of world languages Farook College, recognized by the UN. The economic significance of the region where Calicut, Kerala, Arabic is being spoken makes the language more acceptable in the India world political and economical arena. The geopolitical significance of the region and its language cannot be ignored by the economic super powers and political stakeholders. KEY WORDS: Arabic, Dialect, Moroccan, Egyptian, Gulf, Kabael, world economy, super powers INTRODUCTION DISCUSSION The importance of Arabic language has been Within the non-Gulf Arabic varieties, the largest multiplied with the emergence of globalization process in difference is between the non-Egyptian North African the nineties of the last century thank to the oil reservoirs dialects and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is in the region, because petrol plays an important role in nearly incomprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Algeria. propelling world economy and politics.
    [Show full text]
  • Arabic Sociolinguistics: Topics in Diglossia, Gender, Identity, And
    Arabic Sociolinguistics Arabic Sociolinguistics Reem Bassiouney Edinburgh University Press © Reem Bassiouney, 2009 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in ll/13pt Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and East bourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 2373 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 2374 7 (paperback) The right ofReem Bassiouney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements viii List of charts, maps and tables x List of abbreviations xii Conventions used in this book xiv Introduction 1 1. Diglossia and dialect groups in the Arab world 9 1.1 Diglossia 10 1.1.1 Anoverviewofthestudyofdiglossia 10 1.1.2 Theories that explain diglossia in terms oflevels 14 1.1.3 The idea ofEducated Spoken Arabic 16 1.2 Dialects/varieties in the Arab world 18 1.2. 1 The concept ofprestige as different from that ofstandard 18 1.2.2 Groups ofdialects in the Arab world 19 1.3 Conclusion 26 2. Code-switching 28 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 Problem of terminology: code-switching and code-mixing 30 2.3 Code-switching and diglossia 31 2.4 The study of constraints on code-switching in relation to the Arab world 31 2.4. 1 Structural constraints on classic code-switching 31 2.4.2 Structural constraints on diglossic switching 42 2.5 Motivations for code-switching 59 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Agreement in Tunisian Arabic and The
    Agreement in Tunisian Arabic and the collective-distributive distinction Myriam Dali and Eric Mathieu The puzzle Like their sound plural (SP) counterparts, the φ-features of broken plurals (BP) subjects in Tunisian Arabic (TA) normally agree with the verb in gender and number but, as seen in (1), they can also fail to agree with the verb. Rjel `men' is masculine plural while the verb is unexpectedly inflected in the feminine singular (in Standard Arabic, this is only possible with non-humans). Is this a case of agreement failure? (1) El rjel xerj-u / xerj-et The man.bp go.outperf-3.masc.pl / go.outperf-3.fem.sg `The men went out.' [Tunisian Arabic] The proposal First, we show that the contrast in (1), gives rise to a semantic alter- nation, as first observed by Zabbal (2002), where masc plur agreement has a distributive interpretation, while fem sing agreement receives a collective interpretation. We build on Zabbal's (2002) insights but re-evaluate them in light of recent developments in the syntax and semantics of plurality and distributivity, and we add relevant data showing that the collective-distributive contrast seen in (1) is not tied to the nature of the predicate. Zabbal makes a distinction between plurals denoting groups (g-plurals) and plurals denot- ing sums (s-plurals). He first argues that the g-plural is associated with N (making it lexical and derivational) while the s-plural is under Num (inflectional). We provide arguments and evidence for his second proposal, briefly introduced towards the end of his thesis, namely that the g-plural is in fact inflectional and thus not under N.
    [Show full text]
  • Arabic and Contact-Induced Change Christopher Lucas, Stefano Manfredi
    Arabic and Contact-Induced Change Christopher Lucas, Stefano Manfredi To cite this version: Christopher Lucas, Stefano Manfredi. Arabic and Contact-Induced Change. 2020. halshs-03094950 HAL Id: halshs-03094950 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03094950 Submitted on 15 Jan 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Arabic and contact-induced change Edited by Christopher Lucas Stefano Manfredi language Contact and Multilingualism 1 science press Contact and Multilingualism Editors: Isabelle Léglise (CNRS SeDyL), Stefano Manfredi (CNRS SeDyL) In this series: 1. Lucas, Christopher & Stefano Manfredi (eds.). Arabic and contact-induced change. Arabic and contact-induced change Edited by Christopher Lucas Stefano Manfredi language science press Lucas, Christopher & Stefano Manfredi (eds.). 2020. Arabic and contact-induced change (Contact and Multilingualism 1). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/235 © 2020, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution
    [Show full text]
  • The Dialectal Shared Linguistic Features of the Diverse Arabic Dialects Resulting a Lingua Franca
    International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) ISSN: 2319-7064 ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426 The Dialectal Shared Linguistic Features of the Diverse Arabic Dialects Resulting a Lingua Franca Dialect of Arabic Ameer Ali Hussein Al Majtoomy Lecturer M.A. linguistics in University of Kufa, Najaf, Iraq Abstract: Arabic is a very morphologically rich Semitic language so it has several dialects across the Arab homeland, the paper focuses on the similarities and differences between the Arabic dialects. The research tries to find out the most shares features among the Arabic dialects and decide a dialect a lingua franca of Arabic language to be used and taught as for learners of Arabic. This lingua franca dialect could be used outside the Arabic countries. Keywords: MSA, dialect, lingua franca, Levantine dialect, Gulf dialect, Maghreb dialect 1. Introduction 3. Aims of the study This topic addressed a very important phenomenon in This study aims: western society where immigrants of different Arabic 1) To identify the shared linguistic features according to the dialects can communicate easily in spite of the difference phonological,morphological, syntactic, and semantic between those dialects. The main problem of this project is levels. to shed the light on the similarities between the Arabic 2) To know how the similarities or shared features help the dialects which make it possible for those speakers speakers of Diverse Arabic dialects to understand each understand each other. The second question is how these other. diverse dialects make a speech Arabic community in the 3) To decide whether these diverse dialects of Arabic western society, is it because of the syntactic, semantic and compose a speech community.
    [Show full text]
  • Contrastive Feature Typologies of Arabic Consonant Reflexes
    languages Article Contrastive Feature Typologies of Arabic Consonant Reflexes Islam Youssef Department of Languages and Literature Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway, 3833 Bø i Telemark, Norway; [email protected] Abstract: Attempts to classify spoken Arabic dialects based on distinct reflexes of consonant phonemes are known to employ a mixture of parameters, which often conflate linguistic and non- linguistic facts. This article advances an alternative, theory-informed perspective of segmental typology, one that takes phonological properties as the object of investigation. Under this approach, various classificatory systems are legitimate; and I utilize a typological scheme within the framework of feature geometry. A minimalist model designed to account for segment-internal representations produces neat typologies of the Arabic consonants that vary across dialects, namely qaf,¯ gˇ¯ım, kaf,¯ d. ad,¯ the interdentals, the rhotic, and the pharyngeals. Cognates for each of these are analyzed in a typology based on a few monovalent contrastive features. A key benefit of the proposed typologies is that the featural compositions of the various cognates give grounds for their behavior, in terms of contrasts and phonological activity, and potentially in diachronic processes as well. At a more general level, property-based typology is a promising line of research that helps us understand and categorize purely linguistic facts across languages or language varieties. Keywords: phonological typology; feature geometry; contrastivity; Arabic dialects; consonant reflexes Citation: Youssef, Islam. 2021. Contrastive Feature Typologies of 1. Introduction Arabic Consonant Reflexes. Languages Modern Arabic vernaculars have relatively large, but varying, consonant inventories. 6: 141. https://doi.org/10.3390/ Because of that, they have been typologized according to differences in the reflexes of their languages6030141 consonant phonemes—differences which suggest common origins or long-term contact (Watson 2011a, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Syntactic Analysis of the Tunisian Arabic
    Syntactic analysis of the Tunisian Arabic Asma Mekki, Inès Zribi, Mariem Ellouze, Lamia Hadrich Belguith ANLP Research Group, MIRACL Lab., University of Sfax, Tunisia [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract. In this paper, we study the problem of syntactic analysis of Dialectal Arabic (DA). Actually, corpora are considered as an important resource for the automatic processing of languages. Thus, we propose a method of creating a treebank for the Tunisian Arabic (TA) “Tunisian Treebank” in order to adapt an Arabic parser to treat the TA which is considered as a variant of the Arabic lan- guage. Keywords: Dialectal Arabic, Syntactic analysis, Treebank creation, Tunisian Arabic. 1 Introduction Arabic language is a mixture of the Dialectal Arabic (DA) used by the Arabian native speakers and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the official language studied in schools, newspapers, etc. Nowadays, Arabic Dialects (AD) are the most widely used variety of Arabic, which promotes their treatments. However, the dialects mark pho- nological, morphological, syntactic and lexical differences when compared to the MSA. Actually, AD written in social networks, blogs or even some written documents do not follow an orthographic standard, which complicates the fact of having some adequate corpora able to be used for creating linguistic tools for DA. In this paper, we will propose a method for creating a syntactic parser in favor of the Tunisian Arabic. First, we will identify the syntactic differences between the MSA and the TA. Then, we will present an overview of the Arabic syntactic parsers.
    [Show full text]
  • Download This Profile As a Pdf File
    HL Profile/K-12/Arabic, Amharic, Tamazight Daniela Schiano di Cola/10.18.07 Community-Based Program Background Information Institution: Pacific Arabic Resources Program address: 55 New Montgomery St. Ste. 713, San Francisco, CA 94105 Telephone: (415) 644-0110 Fax: (415) 644-0220 Web address: http://www.pacificarabic.com Contact person Name: Jamal Mavrikios Title: Executive Director Email: [email protected] Levels: Primarily geared towards adults, though school and middle school students enroll from time to time Languages/dialects taught: Modern Standard Arabic Levantine Arabic (dialect of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestinian territories) Egyptian Arabic Tunisian Arabic Moroccan Arabic Gulf Arabic Iraqi Arabic Amharic Tamazight (Berber languages) Program Description Purposes and goals of the program: As a secular, non-political institution Pacific Arabic Resources is committed to offering the most comprehensive Arabic language study in the Bay Area. Since our founding in 2000, we have expanded to offer other Afro-Asiatic languages as well as culture and history courses in English. 1 HL Profile/K-12/Arabic, Amharic, Tamazight Daniela Schiano di Cola/10.18.07 Type of Program: Full language immersion and a summer-intensive program Program Origin: The program was founded in 2000. Staff Instructors’ and administration’s expectations for the program: Instructors expect students to study vocabulary and reading exercises at home and come to class prepared to immerse themselves in speaking and hearing Arabic. Our classes are taught in almost complete Arabic immersion, with only a small block of time set aside in each class for introduction and discussion of difficult grammatical concepts in English. Students Students: Heritage speakers, 10-20% Countries of origin: Our heritage speakers have roots across the Middle East and North Africa, and many were born in or have relatives in France.
    [Show full text]
  • The International Status of Kiswahili: the Parameters of Braj Kachru's
    The International Status of Kiswahili: The Parameters of Braj Kachru’s Model of World Englishes by Patrick Lugwiri Okombo, MA [email protected] Nairobi, Kenya & Edwin Muna, MA [email protected] Nairobi, Kenya Abstract This paper critically examines the status of Kiswahili as an international language within the parameters of Braj Kachru’s sociolinguistic construct – “Model of World Englishes”, that works to analyze how sociolinguistic histories, multicultural backgrounds and contexts of function influence the use of English in different regions of the world. In our view, such a model yields fairly objective results. Thus, the results of this paper are that Kiswahili perfectly meets the standards of an international language within Braj Kachru’s model, albeit with few disparities. The paper concludes that Kiswahili’s growth into an international language is clearly taking the trends taken by English as examined by Kachru. Hence, the findings reinforce Kiswahili’s geo- political significance as it recommends the creation of conditions that would encourage its spread and influence in the world. Key words: Kiswahili, international language, world Englishes, native speaker 55 Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.10, no.7, September 2017 Introduction Kiswahili is an indigenous African language whose origin, according to many researchers, is the coast of Eastern Africa. Traditionally, it was regarded as the language of the coastal communities of Kenya and Tanzania. It remained the language of the people of East African coast for a long time. It is argued that the early visitors and traders, such as the Arabs and Persians who came to the East African coast, used to speak with the natives in Kiswahili.
    [Show full text]
  • Authoritarianism and Democracy in Muslim Countries: Rentier States and Regional Diffusion
    Authoritarianism and Democracy in Muslim Countries: Rentier States and Regional Diffusion AHMET T. KURU ACCORDING TO FREEDOM HOUSE (2013),1 among countries with populations higher than 200,000, the proportion of electoral democracies is 56 percent (98/174) worldwide, whereas it is only 20 percent (10/49) in Muslim‐majority countries. The average Freedom House score (1 for most and 7 for least democratic) for all countries (3.5) is also better than the average score for Muslim‐majority countries (5.1). Analyzing countries with populations over 500,000, Polity (2010) reaches a similar result: 57 percent (93/164) of all countries and 28 percent (13/47) of Muslim‐majority countries are democracies.2 Why is the rate (and score) of democracy disproportionately low among Muslim‐majority countries? This article argues that the combined effects of rentier states and regional diffusion provide the best explanation. The rentier state model explains the links between the rent revenue, limited taxation, and authoritarianism. A state becomes “rentier” if oil, gas, and mineral rents constitute over 40 percent of its revenues. The state 1Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2013,” accessed at http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ files/FIW%202013%20Booklet.pdf, 1 October 2013. 2Polity IV, “Country Reports 2010,” accessed at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity06.htm, 1 Jan- uary 2012. AHMET T. KURU is an associate professor of political science at San Diego State University. He is the author of the award‐winning Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey, and the co‐editor (with Alfred Stepan) of Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey.
    [Show full text]