The Role of Tribal Affiliation in Shaping Language Use and Identity Among Southern Iraqi Community

Abstract

The tribal belonging in southern Iraq is a strong determinant of social organization, relations between people, as well as forming identity. Despite the fact that tribes are also well researched on the anthropology and political sociology field, they have not received much sociolinguistic attention on how they have contributed towards the development of linguistic activities and identity. The paper will discuss how tribal identification affects the language use, dialects, and identity performance among the communities in Basra, Maysan, and Dhi Qar. A mixed ethnographic and variationist sociolinguistic methodology was used, where sociolinguistic interviews, participant observation and language attitude questionnaires were used to collect data on 72 participants of six leading tribes. The results indicate that tribal belonging is an important determinant of phonological, lexical and pragmatic aspects of speech and that speakers are being sensible in their application of the aspects as their identity, solidarity and social differentiation markers. The paper reveals that tribal speech is a symbolic source of identity negotiation and adds to the general debate of language, social identity and community in sociolinguistics.