Voicing ethnicities : ethnic orientation, contact, and lexical borrowing in Chaouia

Abstract EN

This research seeks to investigate the link between ethnic orientation and patterns of Arabic lexical borrowing in Chaouia dialect.

We argue that, speakers who have high ethnic engagement scores would differ linguistically from speakers who have low ethnic engagement scores.

Ethnic orientation responses of 399 Chaoui informants were examined in relation with their lexical variation indexes.

The results revealed that lexical borrowing is higher among speakers with high ethnic orientation scores than speakers with low scores.

Ethnic orientation serves as a boundary that inhibits and accelerates the diffusion of Arabic loanwords in Chaouia variety in Batna city.