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Arabic Writing in the Digital Age
Towards a Theoretical Framework
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Book Description
The written and spoken forms of Arabic have been traditionally viewed as separate forms of the language that rarely overlap in writing, but this book will examine the recently emerged concept of ‘mixed’ writing that combines both written and spoken forms.
This book takes a close look at different examples of mixed Arabic writing in modern (twentieth to twenty-firstt century) print and online literature, offering an analysis of this type of mixing alongside a dynamic model for analysing mixed Arabic writing, and the motivations for producing this type of writing. This book further introduces the ground-breaking concept of the seven writing styles for Arabic, ranging from Classical Arabic to ChatSpeak, whilst also offering an overview of early Arabic literacy and children’s literature.
Primarily aimed at Arabic researchers and teachers in linguistics, sociolinguistics, identity studies, politics and Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language, this book would also be informative for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying Arabic as foreign language, Arabic linguistics and dialectology.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Variation in Arabic
- A delineation of variation in Arabic
- The proposed theoretical framework: seven writing styles
- A practical application of the writing styles in online writing
- Colloquial Written Arabic in print, in various dialects
- Children’s literature and early literacy
- Conclusion
Index
Author(s)
Biography
Saussan Khalil, Senior Arabic Language Teacher, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, UK. Founder & Director, Kalamna CIC (www.kalamna.org).
Reviews
"The linguistic phenomenon of Arabic code-switching and translanguaging in written Arabic has recently emerged as a powerful form of communication online. The connection between these forms of communication and the socio-political impact they have within the ongoing tumultuous transformations in the Arab world makes this study very appealing. It is true that things move and change very rapidly in the linguistic realm of cyber communication, but such is the rigorous approach on which the book is based, that I believe this would be a book that will continue to be used in years to come, also by virtue of its being an original, indeed pioneering, study that addresses the colloquial/standard variation of written Arabic."
- Fabio Caiani, Department of Arabic and Persian, University of St. Andrews, UK