Distinctive linguistic features of Egyptian-Arabic dialect of Farafra oasis: the problem of local identity

Abstract EN

Dialect is a distinct variety of a language spoken by speakers in a specific geographical area.

the objective of the paper is to study the Farfaroni dialect.

this dialect is chosen because it is one of the strangest Arabic dialects in Egypt spoken by the indigenous people living in Farafra in the new valley governorate.

the paper aims to analyze the Farfaroni dialect and identify its distinctive linguistic features (phonological, morphological, and lexical).

the data is collected from recorded conversations that are transliterated and translated into english to ensure speech clarity.

the ethnolinguistic identity theory by Giles (1987) and the politeness theory by leech (2014) are adopted to analyze the collected data.

additionally, the study explores the attitudes of Farfaronis towards their dialect.

Kovacs Rac and S.

Halupka-Rešetar's (2018) survey (translated into Arabic by the researcher) is applied to 86 respondents aged between (18-60).

it revealed that speakers of Farfaroni tend to change their behavior and accommodate the Cairene dialect when speaking to strangers.

the respondents attributed high value to the Cairene dialect which places more weight because of sociocultural factors.

they seek to have a favorable outcome and acquire esteem.

though unintelligible, the Farfaroni dialect is favored by (91%) of the respondents who feel that the dialect is attractive but avoid using it due to negative social judgment.

the study contributes to the literature on dialect identity in ethnic minorities in new valley.