Contrastive Analysis and Diglossia

Abstract

This paper starts by discussing the relation between contrastive analysis and diglossia, attempting to find out whether the colloquial dialects of Arabic have any influence on the learning of English by speakers of those dialects. If it does, then colloquial, as well as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), has to be contrasted to English for pedagogical purposes. So far, most contrastive analysis studies have dealt only with MSA as though colloquial has no influence on learning English. Evidence from university students' writing in MSA and English is presented to prove that colloquial does influence these students' learning of MSA and English. The paper concludes that this influence of colloquial is sufficient justification for including the colloquial dialects in Arabic-English contrastive studies, MSA alone being not enough for pedagogical purposes..