Overview

Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia is a three-volume study of the Arabic dialects spoken in Bahrain by its older generation in the mid 1970s, and the socio-cultural factors that produced them. Volume 1: Glossary, published in 2001, lists all the dialectal vocabulary, with extensive contextual exemplification, and cross-referenced to other lexica, which occurred in the complete set of texts recorded during fieldwork. Volume 2: Ethnographic Texts presents a selection of these texts, transcribed, annotated and translated, and with detailed background essays, covering major aspects of the pre-oil culture of the Gulf and the initial stages of the transition to the modern era: pearl diving, agriculture, communal relations, marriage, childhood, domestic life, work. Excerpts from local dialect poems concerned with these subjects are also included. Volume 3: Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Style is based on an extensive archive of recorded material, gathered for its ethnographic as well as its purely linguistic interest.

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9789004464575

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Reviews

The reviewed reviewed work is the culmination of Holes's yearslong research on the communal dialects of Bahrain. The grammatical description, which together with the earlier two volumes makes up the series Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, is probably the only such extensive description of dialects in terms of historical significance. I can only hope that in the coming years researchers will begin new studies on dialects currently used in Bahrain. The last chapter is an excellent contribution, and Holes's complete work will be an unparalleled source for comparative studies. - Maciej Klimiuk, in: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 114/3 (2019)

"""The reviewed reviewed work is the culmination of Holes’s yearslong research on the communal dialects of Bahrain. The grammatical description, which together with the earlier two volumes makes up the series Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, is probably the only such extensive description of dialects in terms of historical significance. I can only hope that in the coming years researchers will begin new studies on dialects currently used in Bahrain. The last chapter is an excellent contribution, and Holes’s complete work will be an unparalleled source for comparative studies."" - Maciej Klimiuk, in: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 114/3 (2019)"

""The reviewed reviewed work is the culmination of Holes’s yearslong research on the communal dialects of Bahrain. The grammatical description, which together with the earlier two volumes makes up the series Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, is probably the only such extensive description of dialects in terms of historical significance. I can only hope that in the coming years researchers will begin new studies on dialects currently used in Bahrain. The last chapter is an excellent contribution, and Holes’s complete work will be an unparalleled source for comparative studies."" - Maciej Klimiuk, in: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 114/3 (2019)

Author Information

Clive D. Holes, Ph.D. (1981) in Linguistics, University of Cambridge, is Professor Emeritus for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on the Arabic language and its dialects, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

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