Variation and Change in a Contact Setting in Mecca

The aim of this paper is to reveal the results of a sociolinguistic investigation in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The researcher examined the variation and change in the speech of Ghamdi migrants who migrated from the South-Western region, Al-Baḥa, of Saudi Arabia to the Western part, Mecca. This migration brought Ghamdis into everyday contact with Meccan. Meccan and Ghamdi dialects are mutually intelligible, however, the linguistic differences between them are enormous. They are different syntactically, morphologically, phonologically, semantically, and lexically. Therefore, it has been expected that sort of variation and change will occur in this contact setting. The study discussed the change in the usage of the interdentals (θ), (ð), and (ðˤ) in relation to three social variables, namely, education, age, and gender. The researcher attempted to answer the following questions: Is there an age effect on the speech of Ghamdi migrants in Mecca? Does gender play a role in the changes that occur in the speech of Ghamdis? Does the level of education have any impact on the Ghamdi linguistic behaviour? And Is there any relation between language change and level of Ghamdis’ education? The results revealed that Ghamdi migrants maintained their heritage variants [θ], [ð], and [ðˤ] at the expense of the Meccan variants [t], [d], and [dˤ].