The perception of lexical and spatial variation by young Tuat Arabic speakers

Abstract EN

The present research uses field research techniques developed by ‘Perceptual dialectology’ (Preston 1986, 1989 and 1996; Garrett 2001), ‘Folk dialectology’ (Benson 2003), or ‘Folk linguistics’ (Niedzielski and Preston 2000) to an Arabic diglossic speech community, the Tuat.

It aims at showing that historical events justify today’s speakers “cognitive maps” and “ethnodialectological” (Auer, 2005) perceptions of their linguistic boundaries, for past happenings affect lay people`s perceptions of their own linguistic frontiers.

Thus, history impacts on the shaping of geo-political borders as well as on their cognitive representations and imagination.