African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 10
Variation
Contrary to what is usually assumed, Arabic folk literature (folk tales, epics, proverbs,
songs (about women, children, wedding, or work), poetry (whether religious, gnomic,
satirical, love, or elegiac), riddles and other verbal art forms are indeed composed in a
multiplicity of linguistic varieties that can be described as neither daily colloquial, nor
standard literary, Arabic. Phrased more positively, these forms are expressed as a set of
mixed varieties in which the two polar types mingle and interfere in various ways. The
basic ingredients (phonological, morphological, syntactical and lexical) are not
necessarily used as they would be in the two original varieties, and they contribute in
shaping a new, multiform variety of a third type. Sometimes this form is colloquializing,
sometimes more classicizing; but in any case it has its own distinctive linguistic
characteristics. This applies to oral as well to written folk literature, which shows that,
from this point of view also, no clear dividing line can be drawn between the spoken and
the written.
Other facts make the complex nature of this linguistic system even more complicated,
and its description and analysis more difficult. On one hand, the colloquial background
may add its mark. This holds especially true for the lexicon: “local” material may spread
over larger areas and enrich the common cumulative lexicon of folk literature. The result
can be temporary or long-lasting misunderstandings; the latter case explains certain
semantic or stylistic transformations.
Beyond local variation, literature is produced within sociologically or geographically
distinct communities (although often living in close contact): For example, Bedouin,
rural, urban or regional. This literature developed (through processes hardly studied in the
early twenty-first century) traditions and true literary lingua francas, the most strongly
established of which became transregional. It should be noted here that Jewish folk
literature is not, linguistically speaking, to be set apart from its Muslim counterpart,
notwithstanding the occurrence of specific features of North African Judeo-Arabic
dialects and, obviously, of Jewish religious or community themes. These regional
linguistic commonalities also often cross the borders of literary genres: “many rural songs
[…] are also performed in the manner and to the tune of urban songs” and “conversely,
many urban songs are also performed in the bedouin way” (Belhalfaoui 1973, 24, 25).
On the other hand, folk literature, being well established as such, constitutes a large
cumulative corpus with its own archives. The diachronic variation of the dialects as well
as the one of its genuine linguistic usage is incorporated into it, and supplies it with
successive contributions that do not stop interacting. Some texts, especially those
belonging to the most fixed genres, can thus be rather difficult to understand properly.
They are, for this very reason, invaluable to the historian of language.
Finally, one has to take into account that folk literature, as any literature, uses
language for the purpose of artistic expression; thus the language is played with, as new
linguistic constructions are developed, and submitted to new formal constraints (with
specific modifications or distortions, especially in the case of sung poetry). Such
creativity also brings about conscious meditations on the literature itself as a cohesive
illustration of a culture, and an awareness of intentional or traditionally preserved