ARABIC IN THE NEWS MEDIA
ARABIC IN THE NEWS MEDIA

Summary/Abstract: This study investigates the vocabulary and semantics of political, social and cultural articles collected from two news sources: BBC Arabic, a prestigious news portal in Modern Standard Arabic by the British Broadcasting Corporation targeting Arab speakers world-wide, and Al-'arabu l-yawma, a Jordanian independent daily newspaper published in Modern Standard Arabic, whose target audience is rather local. The purpose of the study is to contrast and compare the extent to which – if any – elements of vernacular Arabic have percolated up to the assumed stable linguistic code of Modern Standard Arabic. The study also contrasts and compares the use of Modern Standard Arabic versus vernacular elements with respect to the type of topic debated, whether political, social or cultural, with political articles being more likely to display less vernacular elements and the cultural articles to display more. The study also looks at the possible shift in the semantics of lexemes from their consecrated use in Modern Standard Arabic to their use in vernacular Arabic.

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