The Sociolinguistic Salience of Linguistic Variables in Najdi Arabic

Abstract

This study examines the relative sociolinguistic salience of three linguistic variables in two Najdi dialects, the bedouin and sedentary dialects. The quantitative data elicited from sociolinguistic interviews in Alajmi (2019) shows that bedouins are converging on the sedentary dialect, to varying degrees across the variables. The aim of this study is to test whether the sociolinguistic salience of the variables is the reason why there is variation in the level of convergence. Three methods have been used to measure the relative salience of the variables, the Social Category Association Test (SCAT), dialect identification task and multiple interviewers. The data from all three methods agree with the level of convergence in the production data (Alajmi, 2019). The variable that shows high level of convergence to the sedentary variant was found to be salient, while the other variables which show low levels of convergence were not salient.