Introduction

In chapter 3, we dealt with a series of debates involving SA and the dialects to highlight the role of language as a proxy in articulating ideological conflicts of low political intensity. The value-laden nature of the Arabic language was related to issues of external threat and internal collaboration as factors in the SA versus dialect conflict. The colonial and post-colonial experience was treated as the defining context for this interpretation of the conflict. Issues of religious doctrine, linguistic heritage, ethnic identity, and nation and state building were established as major driving forces in this situation. Some of the participants in this conflict saw it as a zero-sum contest between the defenders of SA and their opponents. Their aim was to eliminate the dialects from the Arab linguistic scene, unrealistic though this was, so as to protect and to promote the set of values SA embodies on the cultural and political fronts. Others sought to define the conflict in a way that allows a rapprochement to take place between SA and the dialects. Unlike the maximalists on the SA side, this group did not treat diglossia in Arabic as a case of linguistic corruption or as a moral aberration, but as a fact that needs to be recognized and managed through grammatical reforms, lexical modernization and improvements in pedagogy.

The present chapter will build on some of the issues raised in chapter 3, in particular the role of ethnic/national identity and nation-state building as drivers of interdialectal conflicts.