Language and Gender in the Middle East and North Africa

This chapter presents a critical review of the most prominent findings of sociolinguistic research in Arabic-speaking communities in the Middle East and North Africa and highlights new directions and future prospects in this field. Where relevant, the findings from Arabic are discussed in relation to debates about gender-differentiated linguistic patterns in general. The bulk of the data on Arabic comes from variationist research that deals with structural features. Some studies have focused on aspects of language use at the level of discourse and code choice. Reference is made to findings from both types of research