The social functions of 'formal' kinship distinctions in Hijazi Arabic

Abstract EN

Language as used by a speech community reflects the social structure and value systems of the members of this speech community, and as such, the members evaluate different linguistic structures or "vari eties" in difterenr ways.

Part of the sociolinguistic competence of native speakers is the knowledge of the 'appro priateness' of a particular linguistic form for a particular social context.

This study examines the sociolinguistic rules that govern the use of lexicalized kinship distinctions in 'address ' or 'reference' to a kin by members of nine extended Hijazi families from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The paper will show that, in addition to encoding sociolinguistic information.

kinship forms reflect two other importan t linguistic phenomena : linguistic variation and linguistic change.