Vernacular as marked personal identity of Iraqi community

Abstract EN

Vernacular refers to spoken language used in a particular area, especially one that is not official or written (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, 2010 : versed).

Labov (1972 : 208) defines vernacular as ‘the style in which the minimum attention is given to the monitoring of speech’.

Vernacular being a spontaneous speech can be used in intimate and informal situations.

Bell (1999 : 526) argues that the idiosyncratic performance of individuals can be determined by the unmonitored speech behaviour of the vernacular.

In Arabic, the term 'al-laḥn' is a synonym to 'vernacular' but in a wider sense it refers to committing mistakes in parsing, singing, intelligence and identification of meaning (Abdul-Tawᾱb, 2000 : 13).

It refers to a set of linguistic features which belong to a certain environment and shared by all citizens (Ibrahīm, 1952 : 16).

Non-native citizens may regard vernacular as an improper usage because it obviously reflects the unconscious knowledge of people bearing positive and negative implications.

A speaker may intentionally choose his native vernacular in order to show prejudice to the society where he comes from.

Tagliamonte (2006 : 7) comments on this point saying that "the choices speakers make among alternative linguistic means to communicate the same information often conveys important extralinguistic information".

We may resort to vernacular in order to identify important things about individuals : the socio-economic class and the local community.

However, linguists are not allowed to estimate one language over another because all are communicatively significant as mentioned by the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) ; Narrated Ibn-Abᾱs that Gabriel teaches the Glorious Quran to the Prophet Mohammad in seven letters (vernaculars).

(al-Buxᾱri, 1987 : 4705).

The present study concentrates on vernacular expressions used by Iraqi communities (western and southern) on the phonological and semantic levels.

Generally, individuals can be identified socially or regionally through their vernacular because it has embedded segmental, supra-segmental or semantic constructions.