The Impact of Three Social Factors on the Variation of “Qaf” in Ammani Arabic

Abstract

This study aims to explore the effects of three social factors on the variation of (Qaf) in Ammani Arabic. In specific, the social factors investigated were gender, age, and level of education. In order to elicit a corpus of vernacular speech, thirty sociolinguistic interviews with 30 speakers who were all born and raised in Amman were conducted. Using computer software GOLDVARB X (Sankoff et al., 2005), it was found that all social factors were statistically significant. Furthermore, gender was considered the most significant factor while education appeared to be the least significant factor. The results of the study support previous research that females frequently use [?], presenting their feminine identity. In regard of age, old participants favored the use of [g] rather than [?] while [?] was most frequently used by young speakers. Moreover, education was also found as a significant social factor. In this respect, low-educated preferred [g] and highly-educated speakers preferred [q]. In regard to education, the researcher followed Abdel-Jawad’s (1987) proposal that education in Arabic is a genuine variable which directly affects language variation in Arabic.