Indexical meanings of the realization of /sˤ/ ص as [s] س in spoken and written Jordanian Arabic: a language change in progress?

Abstract

This study examines how the phonetic realisation of the phoneme /sˤ/ and its orthographic form ص is surfacing as the variant [s] in speaking and as س in writing in Ammani Arabic (AA), which is a variety of Jordanian Arabic (JA), and how this relates to language variation. We look at instances where certain Ammani Arabic speakers, particularly females, pronounce and write words containing /sˤ/ ص as [s] س, despite both /sˤ/ and /s/ being phonemes in JA in general and in AA in particular. We used a quantitative corpus-based approach, where we obtained written data from Facebook, and elicited spoken tokens and qualitative data through interviews. Our findings reveal that females in our two corpora [spoken and written] use and prefer [s] and س more than males, and our interviews revealed that female interviewees also prefer this pronunciation and writing. We suggest that the use of [s] س instead of [sˤ] ص by females can be seen as a direct index for femininity within their community of practice, and that this pronunciation/writing can indirectly index female gender in daily conversations and on social media websites, based on orders of indexicality (Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23. 193–229).