Investigating Dialectal Patterns among Kairouanese University Students

This research project is a synchronic study of variability in language in relation to attitude and language use. It is an attempt to investigate the linguistic differences that might exist in the speeches of the inhabitants of urban and rural areas in the town of Kairouan, located in the middle of the Tunisian country. The dialectal varieties of the dwellers belonging to both the city and to the countryside are claimed to vary from each other phonologically, lexically and grammatically. Also, this scientific inquiry tries to reveal how the way of speaking would reflect not only social and regional affiliations of individual speakers but also would lead to social categorization. The latter is seen to be the results of negative or positive feelings expressed by both the listeners and the users of a prestigious or less prestigious variety. Furthermore, the reasons or the factors that would cause language to vary between students coming from the city center and rural areas are other aims behind this study. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used. There was a questionnaire composed of fifteen closed-ended questions given to 30 males and 30 females. Moreover, a structured inte