Supporting the sociolinguistic repertoire of emergent diglossic speakers: multidialectal practices of L2 Arabic learners

• Autores: Lama Nassif, Khaled Al Masaeed
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 43, Nº. 8, 2022, págs. 759-773
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This study examines the multidialectal (i.e. diglossic) practices in the sociolinguistic repertoire of speech productions of 28 L2 Arabic learners who went through training using the integrated approach to learn two varieties of Arabic at the same time: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Levantine Arabic. Specifically, the study investigated learners’ ability to draw on their sociolinguistic repertoire to prepare and perform end-of-semester presentations (where MSA is the main expected variety) and informal skits (where Levantine Arabic is the expected variety). The findings show participants’ awareness of sociolinguistic expectations and their ability to employ their sociolinguistic inventory to meet those expectations, making predominant use of MSA in the formal presentations and of Levantine Arabic in the informal skits. The benefits of integrated training were manifested in multidialectal lexis distribution, multidialectal features, and multidialectal repair practices. Participants’ awareness and ability to utilise multidialectal resources were apparent in their greater use of MSA lexis, conjunctions and syntactic and morphosyntactic features in the presentations in contrast to the skits. Learners also demonstrated their ability to engage in multidialectal repair practices, a finding that illuminated the regulatory control of their rich productive repertoire in the assigned contexts.