LAS INSTITUCIONES

The aims of the first part of this study focused on the linguistic aspects of MSA use in cross-dialectal interaction and the factors that aided comprehension irrespective of the demographic and linguistic background of the participants; therefore, the analysis was limited to the linguistic forms rather than other sociolinguistic factors that may have an impact on language modifications. The number of 21

participants, although it provided an adequate linguistic data of 193 minutes of recorded language, was not large enough to give an insight into how certain groups of Arabic speakers modify their language in cross-dialectal communication. There were observations of the speakers of North African dialects making more

modifications to their language than the speakers of non-North African varieties; however, a total of 7 participants is a limited number for making strong claims about how the speakers of North African dialects choose to modify their language, especially when other variables such as age, gender and education are not

controlled. Yet such observation would deserve further investigation of how speakers of certain varieties modify their language and for such an investigation a larger number of participants who speak these varieties would assist in reaching more solid conclusions.

Another approach to investigating the mutual intelligibility between certain dialects is through the measuring of the linguistic distance or affinity of these varieties phonologically, morphologically and lexically. Such studies have been conducted on Chinese dialects (Tang and van Heuven, 2009) and Scandinavian languages (Gooskens, 2007) but have yet to be applied to the Arabic varieties. If the linguistic distance between the Arabic varieties is measured, it can be a significant variable for investigating language modification and comprehension in cross-dialectal situations.

Another limitation in the current study was also related to the type of participants. Although, they had different levels of education from High school to PhD

qualifications, they were all literate speakers who have had a variable level of exposure to and use of MSA, with the exception of Kwt1 who was not educated in the Arabic language. Their ability to read and write Arabic entails a higher level of exposure to MSA in comparison with an illiterate Arabic speaker. Investigating cross-dialectal communication between illiterate speakers is yet to be conducted (Abu-Melhim, 1992). It would be useful to see whether the ability to read and the exposure to written language have a role in aiding intelligibility between speakers of different dialects and whether the absence of an MSA background would have an impact on intelligibility. The literacy of the participants was observed in their borrowing of MSA elements when discussing formal topics such as occupations, education systems and the cultural differences between countries in which they classicised their language to match the formality of these topics. Although the study aimed to focus only on informal conversations in order to avoid formality as a variable in borrowing MSA, it was not possible to prohibit the participants from

engaging in these topics. This resulted in instances of MSA borrowings which could not be regarded as outcomes of only the cross-dialectal situation but were also due to the nature of the topics.

One of the aspects of cross-dialectal interaction that this study did not focus on is the ‘leveling’ strategy stated by Blanc (1960) in which the speakers borrow words from dialects other than their own. The reason that leveling was not investigated in the present study was its specific focus on the extent and the role of MSA in particular in aiding cross-dialectal comprehension and not on dialectal borrowings. Conducting such research would require a thorough investigation and verification to confirm that the borrowed dialectal words do not exist in both MSA and the speaker’s dialect but belong to another dialectal variety. Examining the strategy of leveling in cross-dialectal communication in future research would give an insight to whether specific dialects or specific dialectal features have an impact in aiding successful communication and whether certain sociocultural factors influence borrowing from certain dialects and by certain dialect speakers.

In terms of the level of successful comprehension that was observed in this study, the factors and strategies applied by the listeners were not possible to isolate from each other. For example, the strategy of cognate-pairing was still aided by the use of the context. It would be useful in future research on dialect intelligibility to explore the role of cognate-pairing in isolation from other variables such as the context and to see how much cognate-pairing is applied by native listeners in order to understand an utterance in another dialect. For such an investigation to be conducted, the native listeners might be presented with short sentences or even individual dialectal words and asked to state their meanings without the presence of much context. Another approach also for investigating the strategies applied by the NSs to understand other dialects, could be through listening to third-party talks or intra-dialectal conversations in a different dialect and observing the level of comprehension the native listener can achieve and the strategies they apply. Examining how the NSs deal with Arabic variability, whether in cross-dialectal or intra-dialectal situations, would give more insight into how communication and comprehension is achieved and would enable TASL professionals to make use of

these techniques in order to enable Arabic L2 learners to better cope with language variability.