Sociolinguistic reflections of privatization and globalization: The Arabic of Egyptian newspaper advertisements.

This dissertation examines the discourse of Egyptian newspaper advertisements, and describes its particular linguistic characteristics. The study is timely because of contemporary developments in Egypt, as the economy is becoming increasingly privatized and hence advertising needs to respond to new market forces. Further, while scholars have long recognized and studied geographic and sociolinguistic variation in spoken Arabic, written Arabic has long been popularly perceived to be uniform throughout the Arab world. However, variation in writing has recently become evident, and this is also true in advertising. The central focus of the study is a textual analysis based on an ad corpus of 550 unique advertisements. These were randomly selected from over 300 individual copies of 36 different newspapers published in Cairo between October 1997 and January 1998. Interviews provide contextual framing for the linguistic analysis and provide insight into factors which influence the producers of the advertisements. Finally, a focus group of typical readers provides feedback from recipients of the advertisements' message. Results indicate that the written Arabic of newspaper ads is markedly influenced by the spoken language. While this includes a limited number of specifically colloquial elements, the greater and more general influence is more subtle, reflected in the use of borrowings and in variations from prescriptive rules. Evidence suggests that borrowings appear in print only after gaining enough spoken currency to succinctly convey the advertisers' message. Non-prescriptive usage reflects flattening of complex morphology which itself parallels similar well-established spoken norms. Though colloquial elements are often disparaged as corruptions of good Arabic, borrowings are considered by more westernized informants to lend a sophisticated feel appropriate for upscale items. Despite widely expressed concern for proper Arabic, variations from prescriptive norms prompted little reaction among informants and went unnoticed by most readers. Sometimes advertisers even prefer non-prescriptive structures which facilitate quick communication. While Arabic accommodates considerable experimentation, it remains for advertisers to assess public reactions to the varying strategies they are pursuing.PhDCommunication and the ArtsJournalismLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsLinguisticsMarketingMass communicationSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132660/2/9977238.pd