Language Arts & Disciplines

A unique comic-illustrated exploration of the rich vocabulary derived from body parts in Arabic

We are all married to our bodies, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. As a result, the body is a hard-wired, powerful presence in thought and speech. Rooted in the Body: Arabic Metaphor and Morphology considers this basic premise of linguistic embodiment and shows how it is especially true of Arabic. Consciously and unconsciously, speakers of Arabic use reams of vocabulary derived from the body, making it an ideal springboard for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Arabic morphology. Structurally speaking, Arabic is a language built on abstract roots, short sequences of single consonants that are systematically modified to produce actual vocabulary. Learning to recognize and manipulate those roots is an invaluable skill, especially for non-native adult learners, because it lightens their memorization load significantly.

Rooted in the Body uses delightful side-by-side essays and comic illustrations to invite readers to explore Arabic’s signature morphology as they reflect on some 120 metaphorically charged body parts. On the long road to proficiency, lexical precision is important, but so, too, is cultural fluency. As it demystifies the links between morphology and semantics, Rooted in the Body also uses citations from Arabic’s rich cultural history to highlight the body’s vital role in language. 

This book will be a fascinating and invaluable resource, not only for advanced learners of Arabic but for linguists, rhetoricians, and philosophers of language.

A leading-edge study of Arabic varieties and how they are used, written by distinguished scholars in the field

El-Said Badawi’s seminal Mustawayat al-‘arabiya al-mu‘asira fi Misr (Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt) was first published in Arabic in 1973. Its theory of interrelated language levels that are ever-changing along a sociolinguistic continuum inspired a generation of Arabists and Arabic-language educators to re-examine Arabic varieties from a wide range of perspectives, transforming the way scholars carried out research on language variation, lexicography, and teaching Arabic as a foreign language. Since that time, Arabic has witnessed major changes in the way its spoken and written forms are practiced, but informed, scholarly publications on the current reality of the linguistic landscape have been few and far between. This collective study, with contributions from renowned scholars of Arabic applied linguistics, draws on empirical data to bring together original new research on spoken and written language varieties in Egypt today.

Thematically, Revisiting Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt explores three broad but interconnected areas: Arabic varieties in context, challenges to Badawi’s Levels model, and the pedagogical implications of varying levels in teaching Arabic as a foreign language. It not only discusses the current applicability of Badawi’s model to contexts such as contemporary Egyptian newspapers and Facebook, but looks at empirical data related to colloquial varieties in Egypt and elsewhere, the role of context in their current use, and the approaches to documenting and deriving colloquial lexicons. It also examines linguistic styles in different genres and contexts and for different audiences.

Contributors:

• Muhammad Abdel Haleem, University of London, England
  
• Mona Farrag Attwa, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
  
• Michael G. Carter, University of Oslo, Norway
  
• Mona Kamel Hassan, The American University in Cairo, Egypt
  
• Margaret Larkin, University of California, Berkeley, CA
  
• Gunvor Mejdell, University of Oslo, Norway
  
• Mustafa Mughazy, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
  
• Karin Christina Ryding, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
  
• Waheed Samy, The American University in Cairo, Egypt; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
  
• Devin J. Stewart, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
  
• Willem Stoetzer, Leiden University, Netherlands
  
• Zeinab A. Taha, The American University in Cairo, Egypt
  
• Hanady Tawwakol, The American University in Cairo, Egypt
  
• Kees Versteegh, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  
• Lisa J. White, The American University in Cairo, Egypt
  
• Manfred Woidich, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  
• Shahira Yacout, The American University in Cairo, Egypt
  
• Munther Younes, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY