Third Citizen Dialect
Third Citizen Dialect explores the sociolinguistic influence Egypt had on families in the Hijaz region of Saudi Arabia, resulting in a hybrid dialect. This merge in culture was influenced by Hijazi’s travels for education, multicultural marriages, and consumption of Egyptian media.
The project examines the effects of these interactions in hybrid Hijazi households. The CDs acts as an oral archive that reveal shared experiences and cultural ties that shape identity, making language powerful tool of expression.
The audios were collected though an interview process. These interviews enabled the stories of these hybrid Hijazi’s to be woven together under different themes, tracking the dilution of the Egyptian dialect between different generations, and mapping their history through terminology.
Each audio relates to a different theme in the ongoing archiving process, designed to foster a sense of familiarity to my audience. Echoing Egyptian poet Mohammed Dawirsh's belief that "language duality is not a problem but an innate ability.