Towards determining social class in Arabic-speaking communities and implications for linguistic variation

Abstract

One purpose of this paper is discovering the socioeconomic indicators that determine social class identification in Arabic-speaking Communities. Another purpose is investigating whether those socioeconomic indicators have the same influence as social class on linguistic variation. The study focuses on a community of fifty-two Christian rural migrant speakers to the City of Hims in Syria. They display variation in their use of the rural form, [q], and the corresponding urban prestigious form, [?]. The community’s general assignment of social class is tested against four socioeconomic indicators: income, education, occupation, and residential area. The statistical analysis shows stronger association between social class and income and residential area; weaker association with occupation; and no association with education. Among the socioeconomic indicators that showed association with social class, only income and occupation exhibited similar results to social class (i.e., emerged statistically insignificant regarding the variable use of both [q] and [?]). Residential area showed different results. Unlike social class and like education that is not associated with social class, it emerged as statistically significant regarding the variable use of [?] and statistically insignificant regarding the variable use of [q].