The study of Arabic language development in light of Arabic diglossia: Overview, prospects, clinical and academic implications

• In Event: Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Round-Table Session (English): Adequacy of Anglo-Saxon based language intervention programs in addressing the diglossic characteristic of Arabic speaking communities

Proposal

A review of current research on Arabic language acquisition reveals it is mostly conducted in Levantine Arabic dialects and predominantly focused on the phonological domain (Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, in press). Such a review also highlights the need for decolonized studies of Arabic language acquisition that are less impacted by the dominant Eurocentric framework of language acquisition and from inherited cultural and linguistic biases. Many early studies on Arabic language acquisition tended to focus on examining the development of different features in spoken dialect only. These studies failed to identify the interrelationships between spoken and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in the course of language acquisition in children exposed to the two language varieties that exist, in complementary functional distribution, in Arabic-speaking communities. Such approaches also miss identifying the unique diglossic knowledge children develop in such specific sociolinguistic situations (Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, 2019).
In this presentation, a review of Arabic language acquisition studies across different dialects and in light of specific sociolinguistic diglossic characteristics will be presented based on two recent publications in the Cambridge and Routledge handbooks on Arabic linguistics and Arabic sociolinguistics respectively. Then, three research studies will be summarized to exemplify the importance of controlling for dialectal features, diglossic features, and targeting diglossic knowledge in authentic humanitarian intervention programs for Arabic-speaking children. The first study concerns the development of an articulation and phonological assessment for Moroccan Arabic-speaking children (Khamis-Dakwar & Labousi, 2018). This study was selected to exemplify the limited applicability of knowledge gained on phonological development from one Arabic dialect (i.e., Egyptian, Jordanian, & Kuwaiti) to another (i.e., Moroccan) with consequences for the development of a valid Arabic speech test for different dialects. The second study relates to the first investigation of morphosyntactic development in both Arabic varieties while controlling for diglossic features (Khamis-Dakwar, Froud, & Gordon, 2012). Results reveal an interplay between the two language varieties in the course of language development and informed the development of the Arabic Diglossic Knowledge and Awareness Test (ADAT; see Khamis-Dakwar & Makhoul. 2014). The third study presents preliminary results on the relation between children’s diglossic knowledge and awareness and their success in learning MSA in schools. A significant correlation was found between children’s diglossic knowledge and Arabic learning as measured by final scores on the ADAT, despite varying levels of diglossic knowledge and language awareness abilities. Finally, we will discuss the need for humanitarian initiatives in the Arab world to be related to current evidence on language acquisition, as well as the importance of detaching from prescribed general assessment tools that are not scientifically validated.

Author

• Reem Khamis-Dakwar, Adelphi University