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Niloofar Haeri, Sacred language, ordinary people: Dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2007

Naima Boussofara-Omar
Naima Boussofara-Omar
Affiliation:
Arabic Studies, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 USA, [email protected]
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Extract

Niloofar Haeri, Sacred language, ordinary people: Dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. xvi, 184. Hb $59.95.

Sacred language, ordinary people is an excellent linguistic ethnography of Arabic diglossia in “an attempt at understanding the cultural and political implications of the divide between Classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic” (p. xi). The passionate debate about Classical Arabic (the language of the Qur'an) as a facilitator of or a barrier to modernization and change is handled intelligently, though provocatively.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 466 - 469
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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References

REFERENCES

Boussofara-Omar, Naima (1999). Arabic Diglossic switching in Tunisia: An application of Myers-Scotton's MLF model. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
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