ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a partial update of the chapter on Middle East and North Africa published in the previous edition of The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World, by discussing the ways sociolinguistics and the sociology of language have investigated issues related to the Arabic language in the Middle East between 2008 and the first semester of 2022. The main topics covered in this chapter are dialect contact, variation and change, the contextual use of language, and the social meaning of linguistic codes and code choices.
The chapter begins with observations on the impact the geopolitical situation of the Arab world has had on sociolinguistic research and linguistic realities in the Middle East, and with information on research associations and recent State of the Arts published in the field.
