Language attitudes of Iraqi native speakers of Arabic: A sociolinguistic investigation

Abstract

This study investigates language attitudes of Iraqi native speakers of Arabic towards two Arabic varieties in Iraq, Standard Arabic (SA) and Iraqi Arabic (IA). The sample of the study comprises 196 participants divided into 107 college students and 89 non-students with no post-secondary degree. The instrument used in the study is a language survey of 44 questions falling into five groups, language preference and use in social interaction, language preference in media, language preference and use in the academic domain, language ideology, and Open-ended questions. The findings showed that the differences in language attitudes between students and non-students were significant, i.e. students showed more favorable attitudes towards SA than IA, whereas non-students overwhelmingly preferred IA. No significant gender-based differences were found among participants.