Diglossia in the arab Media A Comparative Study of Arabic Use in Five Arab Satellite Channels

Abstract

The relationship and tight connection between media and language have attracted the interest of many scholars to undertake comprehensive investigations into how each one has an impact on the other in many ways. The diglossic nature of Arabic has made such investigation worthy of attention and analysis since different varieties of Arabic can be used in a single conversational setting. However, few studies have highlighted the status quo of MSA in the diverse programmes of the Arab satellite channels in addition to the infiltration and leakage of Colloquial Arabic to the domains that are exclusively reserved to MSA. The current study seeks to bridge this gap by introducing new knowledge about how Arabic is used on the Arab satellite channels from a sociolinguistic perspective and investigates the extent to which both MSA and Colloquial Arabic are used in their programmes. It also measures the viewers and broadcasters attitudes towards the use of the Arabic varieties in the programmes of the Arab TV channels. The findings of this study are expected to generate considerable interest and attract very much attention to the increasing use of Colloquial Arabic as well as its infiltration into the domains of MSA. For tackling this issue and pursuing the four-fold objective of this study, five Arab satellite channels were selected; Aljazeera, Future TV, Aldjazaeriya TV, ON TV, and Yemen TV.