Abstract
This study explores the explicit sociolinguistic knowledge and awareness of Arabic diglossia of forty Palestinian children in Israel, ages 6:11 - 11:3 using the Diglossic Knowledge and Awareness Questionnaire, a subtest of the Arabic Diglossic Knowledge and Awareness Test (ADAT). Central to this approach is the recent insight that children who are learning to read and write in a language that is mismatched to their spoken language at home (referred to as an oral-literacy mismatch) need to develop linguistic awareness for both systems, as well as the relationship between them (Terry, Connor, Thomas-Tate, & Love, 2010; Terry, 2011). Our preliminary findings indicate that during third and fourth grades children develop the ability to define the two language varieties that exist in Arabic diglossia, and are able to report on their explicit knowledge of phonological and lexical interrelationships between the two linguistic systems. Furthermore, our findings also indicate that by the third grade the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) variety is given a higher status by those children along with reports of its superiority and purity. These findings suggest a need to take into consideration this developmental milestone in any educational and clinical evaluation of children with and/or at risk to have learning and/or reading disabilities in diglossic language environments, such as Palestinian Arab students in Israel.
Highlights
IntroductionAll Arabic speaking children grow up in communities characterized as being diglossic speech communities, in which two language varieties coexist side by side: the “Low” variety (spoken Arabic known as Aammyia) and the “High” variety (modern standard Arabic known as Fusha)
All Arabic speaking children grow up in communities characterized as being diglossic speech communities, in which two language varieties coexist side by side: the “Low” variety and the “High” variety
While acknowledging the specificity of each diglossic situation to each speech community, and recognizing that some may still debate the diglossic status of AAE/SAE, we suggest that there are clear parallels between diglossia in Arabic and in AAE/SAE
Summary
All Arabic speaking children grow up in communities characterized as being diglossic speech communities, in which two language varieties coexist side by side: the “Low” variety (spoken Arabic known as Aammyia) and the “High” variety (modern standard Arabic known as Fusha). The use and the intensive exposure to the high language variety start once the children enter school, as part of a formal education. This “diglossic” (Ferguson, 1959) situation is exhibited in multiple other speech communities (e.g., Swiss German in Switzerland), but has been generally marginalized in the study of language and literacy skills (e.g., Labov, 2003)
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