Interrelation between Linguistic Change and Socio-cultural Identity Preservation in Ain-Sefra Speech Community: Case of ‘El-Amour’ Variety.

Abstract

The current thesis examines the linguistic and social correlates of early language change in ‘ElAmour (Amr) ethnic group’ within Ain-Sefra speech community. The ultimate aims are to seek for the aspects of language change which are noticed as apparent time pilot study results of phonological and lexical features and to account for an interrelation between this change in progress and identity preservation. Moreover, the questionnaire and the focus group interview findings display an externally-motivated change of the status of the Amr sociolinguistic variables and certain lexemes which are extremely associated with the bedouin life-style of ElAmour individuals. The fundamental statistical significance of the findings reveals that the sound change and the co-existence of its variants among women are more prominent than that of men and participants who have a low level of education. Furthermore, lexical change is conditioned by the lack of use of those vocabulary items in urban environment as opposed to its original Bedouin /nomadic setting. Hence, the qualitative results have testified the tight relationship between linguistic change and Amr speaker’s identity preservation which is perceived as an age-based and context-concomitant phenomenon.