The Sociolinguistics of Iraqi Women: A New Perspective

Abstract

The influence of gender on language preferences has been a major subject of investigation in modern sociolinguistic research. Previous studies show that social norms, level of education, economic status, and social classifications of gender roles have been identified as some of the key factors influencing different linguistic choices between female and male Iraqi Arabic speakers. The findings of previous studies indicated that Iraq is a male-dominated society. And the women are denied most socio-economic privileges accessible to men, which has significantly influenced their linguistic choices. This investigation, therefore, evaluates to what extent males/females’ speech has different linguistic choices in Nasiriya City, south of Iraq. It aims to present sociolinguistic characteristics of Iraqi women based on 16 hours of voice recorded speech divided into three group situations. A random sampling procedure is applied in this study, where 235 speakers from the University of Thi Qar are involved. The findings collected from 134 female speakers and 101 male speakers indicate that young female speakers aged between 18 to 30-year-old are leading patterns of variation and change towards the prestigious dialect in their choice of some Baghdadi variants. In addition, Nasiriya males are conservatives keeping the use of local Nasiriya variants with a slight approach to Baghdadi variants when the spontaneous speech emerges in talks with females in a mixed group. The findings indicated that even though female speakers currently have equal access to all regional, prestige and standard varieties of the Iraqi Arabic language, both genders differ significantly in terms of their linguistic choices, and their individual choices reflect their social status. Most men are more inclined to use Nasiriya Dialect than Baghdadi Dialect for reasons attributed to strength, toughness and masculinity, while women use the language for prestige and to maintain high social status. Finally, it sounds that sociolinguistic behaviors and patterns of Iraqi Arabic female speakers in the Nasiriya Speech Community are similar to those discovered in Basra and other Arabic-speaking nations and societies.