Arabic Conservatism versus English Openness

Abstract

The paper shows that Arabic conservatism contrasts sharply with English openness. While English opens up freely to colloquial varieties as well as other languages of the world, Arabic retreats to itself in search of purity of expression. It is argued that the roots of this contrast have more to do with different linguistic traditions than the real state-of-affairs. In particular, the tendency of English, as opposed to Arabic, for description rather than prescription of linguistic data had far-reaching consequences in this regard Further, it is shown that socio-political realities in the cultures of English and Arabic play a key role in the choice between throughargumentation and counter-argumentation..