While the issue of language contact appears regularly in the literature on sociolinguistics generally, little has been published on language contacts and conflict in Arabic. This volume aims to fill that gap through introducing a variety of research topics where different scholars view the theme of language contact from their various standpoints. The articles thus investigate language contact and conflict issues across the full range of Arabic as it is used both in the Arabic world and in the diaspora. This book contains 17 studies by leading international scholars working on a wide range of topics in Arabic socio-linguistics, divided into four parts. The studies in Part 1 address questions of national language planning in a diglossic situation, with a particular focus on North Africa. Part 2 explores the relationship of identity and language choice in different Arabic-speaking communities living both within and outside the Arab World. Part 3 examines language choice in such diverse contexts as popular preaching, humour and Arab women's writing.
Part 4 contains 5 papers in which variation, code-switching and generational language shift in the Arabic-language diaspora in Europe and the USA are the focus. The collection as a whole provides wide-ranging introduction to key areas of current research, which will be of interest to the general sociolinguist as well as the Arabic language specialist.