Aspectes ètics del periodisme

Of the few research studies that have investigated the semantics of Kuwaiti Arabic, polysemy and semantic change have not been examined in much detail. In his now classic work, folklorist al-Ayyoub (1982: 337-341) included a section in his Kuwaiti Arabic vocabulary book entitled ‘words which have three or more senses’ in which he lists 32 Kuwaiti polysemes/homonyms. One of the limitations of al-Ayyoub’s explanation is that he does not explain why and how these words proliferate. By way of illustration, he shows that the colloquial verb ni ašš carries the following five senses: ‘to target, to engrave, to carve, to pick one’s teeth, to remove spines/needles from skin’ (ibid. 339).

Al-Sabʿān’s (1983: 8) book on semantics is the first academic attempt to study the semantics of the Kuwaiti dialect. Regarding ‘homonymy’, she names a section of her book al-mušta a al-laf i (1983: 98) and glosses it with the English term ‘homonymy’. She recognises 35 Kuwaiti words that are alfā mušta a a ‘homonymous’ in KA; however, only 21 of these are actually polysemous. The author offers no explanation for the distinction between homonymy and polysemy. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of change that al-Sabʿān (1983: 98-104) observes in the spoken Arabic of Kuwait are the following:

1) Metaphorical transfer

2) Semantic transfer (semantic broadening and semantic specialisation) 3) Lexical borrowings

4) Language and dialect contact (the influx of foreign communities in Kuwait)

It can be noticed from the four factors that the first three are purely linguistic, while the fourth factor is a social one. Al-Sabʿān tells us that one of the vital reasons for meaning proliferation is metaphorical transfer and extension. In the following paragraphs, I will illustrate each of the four factors with an example provided by al-Sabʿān (1983).

First, an example of a metaphorical transfer is the word šabba, which has two meanings: ‘lump of alum’ and ‘lamp post’. There is no obvious connection between the two senses except that both the lump of alum and the ‘light bulb’ of the lamp post are bright white. Therefore, the ‘lamp post’ sense is a metaphorical extension of the ‘lump of alum’ because, from a hearsay point of view, lumps of alum have been used in the country (e.g. in folk medicine) long before street lighting was installed in Kuwait (cf. Khalaf 1989: 160-161).

A second factor that causes meaning extension is semantic transfer/shift. Two types of semantic shift are discussed here: semantic broadening (i.e. widening of meaning) and semantic specialisation (i.e. narrowing of meaning). An example of semantic broadening is the word mulla, which has two senses: ‘a Muslim teacher of religion and holy law’, and ‘any religious man’. So the semantic broadening here is the process by which the meaning of mulla becomes broader or more inclusive than its earlier meaning. Therefore, the meaning is no longer limited to Muslim teachers of religion and holy law, but to religious men in general. An example of semantic specialisation is the word lazga meaning ‘sticking plaster’ and, by extension, ‘a person who follows another person in a way that is annoying’. The term lazga designates any sticking object. For instance, lazzā is ‘sticky tape’ in KA, or as an adjective: bēt um lāzi fīnna ‘your house is next to ours’. However, lazga in Kuwaiti has been specialised to mean ‘a sticking plaster’ and then metaphorically extended to mean somebody who is characterised as being lazga (i.e. ‘a human sticker’) for being interfering and for getting under somebody’s skin.

The third factor that causes meaning extension is lexical borrowing, and this is illustrated by the word istād,22 which has three senses: ‘head of a construction site’, ‘teacher’, and ‘stadium’. The head of a construction site is called istād in KA and this is derived from the Persian داتسا meaning ‘master, teacher, tutor; artificer, manufacturer, artisan; barber, etc.’ (Steingass 1892: 49; Frayḥa 1973: 2; Holes 2004a: 306). For instance, istād (and istāḏ) l- in lēzī ‘instructor of English’ is again borrowed from the same Persian root. In addition, football has been the Gulf’s most popular sport since the 1950s. Therefore, the large building where people watch football matches is called istād, and this time it is an adaptation of the English word ‘stadium’. As can be seen, the ‘teacher’ sense is derived from and linked to ‘the head of a construction site’ sense (i.e. polysemy), but the ‘stadium’ sense is ultimately borrowed from the English word ‘stadium’ (i.e. homonymy).

The final factor that causes meaning extension in KA is due to the influx of the non-Kuwaiti labour force. The population of Kuwait was ca. 4 million in August 2015, of whom 1,292,489, or 31 per cent, are Kuwaiti by nationality.23 The rest of the population is a shifting multinational mix of foreign workers.24 Five decades ago, Johnstone (1964: 88) observed that ‘the external influence would seem to have been the speech of the educated Palestinians, of whom there are large numbers in Kuwait and who seem to have influenced the Kuwaiti dialect itself’. Among the many non-local forms, al-Sabʿān (1983) notes the use of the Levantine word mazza (i.e. ‘meze’) by KA speakers and lists two meanings for this word: ‘taste’ and ‘appetisers’. Hence, the word mazza is usually found in menus of Middle Eastern, Greek, and Turkish restaurants in Kuwait, meaning ‘a variety of hot and cold dishes, served together at the beginning of a meal’. Contemporary Kuwaiti speakers usually replace mazza with the literary borrowing mu abbalāt ‘starters (i.e. ‘hors d’oeuvre’)’. Nevertheless, both senses of mazza, i.e. ‘taste’ and ‘appetisers’, are clearly related to one another because they both refer to food tasting and eating.

Apart from the four linguistic factors that cause meaning extension, al-Sabʿān (1983: 39-75) explains in later chapters ten external and socio-cultural factors that shape the spoken Arabic of Kuwait, namely, the discovery of oil, migration, education, the media, healthcare, social care, commerce, means of transportation, sport clubs, and the establishment of the National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters (NCCAL). It seems to me that there are three key events that have helped mould the direction of change, namely, the discovery of oil (1938), independence from Britain (1961), and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990), all of which will be discussed at length in Chapter 5.