ABSTRACT
The smallest of the North African countries, Tunisia juts into the Mediterranean where Algeria and Libya meet; it is less than 100 miles south of Sicily and forty miles west of the island of Pantelleria, administratively part of Sicily. Over 98 percent of the Tunisian population identifies as Arab Muslims of the Maliki rite (one of the four Sunni legal tra ditions), making it the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous country of the Arab world. Yet Tunisia is characterized by great linguistic diversity, as are the Arab world and the Middle East generally. This diversity reflects the history of the region, including forces such as colonization and, more recently, globalization. This chapter examines Tunisia’s changing linguistic characteristics, demonstrating how such forces continue to shape language use there. It also presents two case studies, one focusing on language choice at an international conference on politics and the other analyzing language use on the Internet.
