Chapter 5: The Story of the Badawi Dialect in Jazan, Saudi Arabia
6.3 Marginalization: Third-Order Indexicality
Marginalization is felt by those living in the mountains of Jazan because of lack of development in the region and language discrimination. When people feel threatened and marginalized, they often turn inward and value group camaraderie. Language maintenance is a way of protecting cultural heritage. As everything in Harūb is changing rapidly, preserving ways of speaking that embody a lifestyle that is disappearing becomes vital. Although modernization began in Jazan in the 1970s, development didn’t reach Harūb until the 1990s when the first asphalt road was built between Harūb and the closest urban center in the Tihāmah, Ṣabya.
However, development was slow partly because of the absence of a good road system. At that time, the road to Ṣabya was poor quality and it took three hours to drive. In addition, few people had cars. While the rest of Saudi Arabia developed, the mountain region in Jazan lagged behind. As people in Harūb see the services and resources available in other parts of the country and are told not to speak their dialect outside of the mountain area, they feel marginalized. In response, their unique way of speaking has become a resource for creating solidarity. As individuals use their way of speaking to perform Badu identity and build common ground with each other, their way of speaking has reached third-order indexicality.
56 Johnstone; Andrus; and Danielson, “Mobility”.
7 Conclusion
Language variation and change is a product of social, political, and historical factors. In the case of Badawi in Jazan, the social and historical forces that often cause dialect leveling have had the opposite effect and have resulted in dialect enregisterment. The social processes of isolation, modernization, and marginalization have aided in the enregisterment of Badawi.
People draw boundaries and name languages or dialects for a number of reasons. The need for solidarity led people in Harūb to draw boundaries and name their way of speaking
Badawi. Badawi is strengthened through increasing ideological opposition to the
discrimination they feel as they are becoming more mobile and interacting with outsiders. In response to this, building solidarity with others who have a similar lived experience and language is important.
The question arises about what will happen to Badawi as social and political processes change. As the government is currently investing in the mountain region, and modernization takes root and transforms the area, and people continue to abandon their shepherding and farming lifestyle, will people still feel marginalized? As education, new jobs, and more services are available and people integrate into Saudi society, will there still be a need to create solidarity among the people in Harūb? As long as there is symbolic capital associated with Badawi and Badu identity, it will continue to be spoken.
If people in Harūb become integrated in Saudi society and there is no longer a need for cultivating solidarity, are there other forms of symbolic capital that could be associated with Badawi? In the past year as Saudi Arabia has opened up the country to tourists through the issuing of tourist visas, the Jazan mountains have become one of the top advertised tourist destinations because of its unique cultural traditions and beautiful landscape. Could this provide a new form of symbolic capital for Badawi and Badu identity? It would be worth investigating this in future years.
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