A heavy workload: (Q) as a marker of (supra) local identity in Gaza City

The issue of linguistic prestige (Labov 1966; Trudgill 1972) is one that has been at the core of studies of sociolinguistics. Within Arabic sociolinguistics a long list of scholarly work exists that has attempted to treat the issue of prestige to varying degrees. More recent work has reoriented notions of prestige towards specific dialects of Arabic that are given some weight in the linguistic market in a given region or community (Bourdieu 1991). As Al-Wer and Herin (2011) point out, however, research on the social evaluation of linguistic variables in the Arabic speaking world often lacks an empirical discussion of the emergence of social values, their meaning, and their significance (p. 59).In this paper I present quantitative sociolinguistic results from recent studies I've conducted on the current position of (Q) in the speech of Jaffan Palestinians who presently live as refugees in Gaza City. The results reflect that the sample is split along gender lines. Female speakers show a strong tendency to opt for the traditional Jaffan variant, glottal stop [ʔ], itself a supralocal variant of (Q) in the Levant (Al-Wer 1997), while male speakers overwhelmingly adopt the more localized variant, the voiced velar [g].My interpretation of these results attempts to move the discussion surrounding variants (Q) away from one that appeals to notions of prestige or localized "standards". Instead, draw on these quantitative results to show how the range of possible social meanings of this variable, its indexical field (Eckert 2008; Silverstein 2003; Wortham 2006), is used by Jaffa refugees to do work related to identity formation and maintenance in Gaza City. In doing so I approach the speech of these speakers through the framework of adequation – "the long-term pursuit of socially recognized sameness" – proposed by Bucholtz and Hall (2004). I show how the differing linguistic practices of male and female speakers for (Q) aids in integrating speakers into a local "Gazan" identity frame, while simultaneously maintaining a distinct "Jaffan" or "Palestinian" identity through indexical meanings that operate at a more regional level.This type of analysis has the potential to enrich the field of Arabic sociolinguistics by taking investigations of linguistic variables out of the realm of discrete social categories while highlighting the interface between variationist sociolinguistic work and anthropological theory. In doing so, this type of work makes it possible to more concretely situate an analysis of linguistic production within a given community or speaker. The result allows us, as sociolinguists, to show how linguistic meanings are not static objects of investigation, but instead are as fluid and diverse as the Arabic language itself.