Minority languages and intergroup communication: the case of Siwi (Amazigh) in Egypt

Minority or minoritized languages are often restricted to ingroup use by their own speakers and indexically related to them. Nevertheless, minority languages and their speakers are never isolated; they are part of a multilingual ecology and included in local language hierarchies. In this paper, I focus on the occurrence and role of Siwi in the interaction between Siwi and Arabic speakers in the Siwa Oasis. In this multilingual space, a national minority language, Siwi Amazigh, is spoken by the majority of the population, and different varieties of the dominant language, Arabic, are spoken as L1 by a smaller portion of the population and as L2 by virtually everyone. Data from mixed-group conversations show that although Arabic varieties far outscore Siwi, as one would expect, everyday practices are characterized by the hybridity and heterogeneity typical of multilingual ecologies. This paper provides an accurate portrait of conversational habits in Siwa and depicts Siwi fluctuating between an identity marker value, due to its vitality, and an identity maker value, which builds on it.