[k], [g] and [ʔ] in Amman: Social associations and identity perception in young rural [fallahin] Palestinian speech

Abstract

k], [g] and [ʔ] in Amman: Social associations and identity perception in young rural [fallahin] Palestinian speech Shahd Abu Nahel Built after several immigration waves, Amman developed its own dialect. Previous studies investigated the stylistic and social reallocation process (Britain & Trudgill, 2005) that happened to some major phonemes. The three phonemes [k], [ʔ] and [g] are dialectal reflexes of the Arabic modern standard uvular phoneme [q], and they correlate with social aspects like gender, identity and social class. This study has two parts the first investigates the distribution of the phonemes of the first generation of rural Palestinians hypothesizing that they will follow the generalizations found in Al-Wer (2011). The second part is a large-scale questionnaire targeting the social assumptions of the use of the three reflexes, taking gender and social class into account. The results suggest that three reflexes are being strongly associated with social class rather than gender.