Functions of Code Switching in Egypt: Evidence from Monologues

by Reem Bassiouney

This book reassesses theoretical approaches to diglossia and code-switching in the light of empirical data from Egypt. The work is based on a corpus of monologues that includes political speeches, mosque sermons and university lectures.

Part one is a detailed analysis of the systems of negation, deixis, and mood marking in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, with an emphasis on the occurrence and frequency of composite structures in empirical data.

This analysis provides the basis for an extensive reassessment of theoretical approaches to code-switching in part two; this reappraisal in turn leads to a thorough analysis of the function of code switching in the Egyptian speech community, and of the factors which influence code choice, such as role of the speaker, audience, and subject matter.

272 pages, Leather Bound

First published November 15, 2005

About the author

Reem Bassiouney (Arabic: ريم بسيوني), is a renowned Egyptian author and Professor of Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo. The first Egyptian woman to earn a PhD in Linguistics from Oxford University, she is a leading authority in Arabic sociolinguistics. As a celebrated novelist, she has won several prestigious awards, including the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (2024) for Al-Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy, the Naguib Mahfouz Award (2020) for her bestseller Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy, and the National Prize for Excellence in Literature (2022). Her work, which bridges academic expertise and historical fiction, has been widely translated and recognized globally.