120. Name: Casey Michelle Faust Title: Style Shifting in Egyptian and Tunisian Arabic: A Sociolinguistic Study of Media Arabic (Analysis of Al Jazeera’s ‘Hiwar Maftouh’ Programme Episodes) Institution: University of Utah Country: United States Date: 2012 Language: English Abstract: This thesis investigates speech accommodation and dialect leveling in three episodes of the Al Jazeera program ‘Hiwar Maftouḥ’ (Open Dialogue). The episodes examined vary in their inclusion of speakers from across the Arabic-speaking world, and cover a range of speaking styles from reading to debating, to panel discussions, and street interviews. This thesis posits that Arabic speakers reduce dialect differences when interacting with others not familiar with it, illustrating how Arabic speakers strike a balance between the mutually comprehensible ‘standard’ and their dialect inclinations. While the Egyptian guests maintain both phonological and lexical characteristics of their dialect, the Tunisian guests predominantly use the standard language. However, there are significantly more dialect features in the speech of on-the-street Tunisians. Based on the data set, the Egyptians are able to maintain their dialect in the media setting because it is widely understood throughout the Arab world. Since the Tunisian dialect is not as commonly understood, the Tunisian guests use the standard to reach pan-Arab audiences. This sociolinguistic study illustrates the complexities of how Arabic-speakers manipulate their language depending on the social context and their audience.
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