Research project
The Effects of Residential Segregation, Social Attitude, and Sense of Belonging on Dialect Contact in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is a city where Saudis of both Bedouin and non-Bedouin social groups co-exist. Given that they are theoretically in daily contact, a question that naturally arises is whether the marked linguistic features of both social groups tend to weaken or level out altogether. My study aims to analyse the speech of both Bedouin and non-Bedouin speakers in order to investigate the effects of residential segregation, social attitude, and both groups’ sense of belonging on the outcome of dialect contact in Jeddah. It also aims to analyse three levels of linguistic variables to investigate whether both social groups are adopting certain levels of linguistic structure, and whether they do so equally among three levels.