Eva Marie Håland focuses on the field of literary sociolinguistics as she approaches the testy and as yet unsolved problem for Arabic about the nature of language in literary works, raising the issue of complex discourse coherence relations when two (or more) distinct variants are used. The long-held taboo on encoding vernacular Arabic in writing has seen its hold gradually diminish over time, especially during the last half-century, with rapidly accelerating changes in authentic dialogue and first-person narrative. Håland examines the shifting formulas and standards for vernacular writing and orthography, including blending, codeswitching, and hierarchies of registers used for different purposes, such as parodic stylization.