Men as Leaders of Linguistic Change: Case of Tlemcen Speech Community

Gender as a social variable has played a major role in the explanation of linguistic variation. Most of Arabic data on gender distinction through language, like many other western studies, result in the fact that ``women adapt to prevailing prestigious forms more than men`` (Dittmar, 1976: 237) and that they initiate and are the leaders of linguistic change (Labov 2001; Eckert McConnell-Ginet 2003). However, this generalization is not to be applicable along the Arab world for there can be some exceptions as is the case of Tlemcen speech community where males depart from social norms and are leaders of dialectal change towards the rural whereas females keep being conservative to the old-fashioned-urban native dialect though it is stigmatized. For the purpose of this study, a convenient sample of 122 informants aged between 5 and 85 years old of the two sexes living, studying, or working in Tlemcen City was selected and a triangulation of methods has been opted for to collect primary data. Our findings prove that Tlemcenian males (from adolescence on) initiate regional dialect change by adopting and accommodating to the supralocal rural vernacular characterized mainly by the studied variant [g] after shifting from and stigmatizing their local urban [ʔ].