The social motivation of code-switching in mosque sermons in Egypt

Abstract

Studies on language and religion in the Arab world have generally focused on dialectal variation between different religious communities within specific countries (cf. Abu-Haidar 1991; Holes 1984). This study, on the other hand, tries to show how Muslim religious figures exploit the diglossic situation in Egypt in their sermons in order to convey social messages more effectively to their target audience. I focus on patterns of language use within the Muslim religious community by examining cases of code-switching between SA (standard Arabic) and ECA (Egyptian colloquial Arabic) in mosque sermons. The study references indexicality (Woolard 2004) and markedness theory (Myers-Scotton 1998, 2005) in its theoretical framing, and analyses the discourse function of and social motivations for exploiting the diglossic situation in these sermons. It aims to show how Islamic preachers can manipulate the linguistic situation to convey a religious message.