204668

The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital: Language, State, and Class in Egypt
Author(s): Niloofar Haeri

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 38, No. 5 (December 1997), pp. 795-816
Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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Current Anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
1997 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/97/3805-0002$2.50
The Reproduction of
Symbolic Capital
Language, State, and Class
in Egypt1
by Niloofar Haeri
The relationships between the state, the dominant classes, and

symbolic capital are neither linear nor timeless. Official/standard
languages, for example, are commonly thought to represent the
speech of the dominant classes, and states are said to seek hegemony over these languages. What happens, however, when institutions besides the state make successful claims to control
over these languages? What happens when the choice of an official language is not guided by the speech habits of the dominant
classes? What becomes of the relationship between the official
language and the dominant classes when proficiency in a foreign
language rather than the official language earns the highest rewards? These questions prove central to a critique of Bourdieus
notions about linguistic exchange and its relation to cultural capital.
niloofar haeri is Associate Professor of Anthropology at
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md. 21218, U.S.A. [haeri@
jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu]). She was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1981; Ph.D., 1991) and has taught there and at
Swarthmore College. She has conducted research on sound
change and stylistic variation and their relation to class and gender and on the place of Classical Arabic in the lives of ordinary
Egyptians. Among her publications are A Linguistic Innovation
of Women in Cairo (Language Variation and Change 6:87112),
Structuralist Studies in Arabic Linguistics: Papers Published by
Charles Ferguson 19481992 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), and The
Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class, and Education
(London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996). The
present paper was submitted 5 xii 96 and accepted 18 xii 96; the
final version reached the Editors office 5 ii 97.
1. The research reported on in this article was funded by a number

of institutions at different times. I thank the National Science
Foundation (grant # SBR9421024), the Wenner-Gren Foundation,
the Institute for Intercultural Studies, and the Mellon Foundation.
I also thank Kathryn Woolard, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and the
anonymous reviewer of this paper. I have benefited from discussions with Talal Asad, Ragui Assaad, Lanfranco Blanchetti-Revelli,
Behrooz Ghamari, Ashraf Ghani, Cynthia Nelson, Hanan Sabea,
and Gillian Sankoff. An earlier version of this paper was presented
in the Research Scholars Seminar series at the American University in Cairo in April 1996.
The resignation of Egypts official arts censor in the

spring of 1996 caused a stir in the media. The main
English-language newspaper, Al-Ahram Weekly, ran an
article on the subject (April 1117, 1996, p. 18) along
with a biography of the censor. Discussing the educational and career background of the official, the weekly
reported that she had attended a Franciscan school2 in
Mansoura (a province in the Delta) and then Cairo University, where she had majored in economics and political science. Later on, however, she had chosen a career
in the media. The article went on as follows:
Friends told her of an upcoming exam to recruit radio announcers. She applied, and a day before her
exam she visited Farouk Shousha, a family friend
and a senior announcer at the time . . . , to ask for
his views on her potential as an announcer. He
asked her to read, then sadly told her that she had a
great voice and good diction, but that her grammar
was atrocious! I was shocked. I was always top of
my class in language, so what could have possibly
happened? She realized that the years in college
and reading mostly foreign language materials left
my Arabic rather rusty. But what was she to do,
with the exam the following day?
That same day she had asked a friend to teach her Arabic in 67 hours. The next day she had passed the
exam and even managed to impress the difficult program director.3
I would like to use this anecdote as a springboard for
providing a political economy of the relations between
class, language, the state, and the reproduction of linguistic value in Egypt. Through an ethnography of the
sociolinguistic situation, I will engage and critique
Bourdieus theory of social reproduction and his construct of the marche linguistique (Bourdieu and Boltanski 1975; Bourdieu and Passeran 1977; Bourdieu 1977,
1982, 1991). This theory has been criticized on a number of important grounds, among them its equation of
institutional domination with hegemony (Woolard
1985) and its lack of recognition of resistance and
agency (Giroux 1983). I will argue that it is further unsatisfactory for treating the process of the reproduction
of symbolic capital by the state and its institutions as
unhindered by internal contradictions and by the constraints of history. Symbolic capital that becomes official, as in the case of official languages, is often em2. The full name of the school is Scuola delle Religiose Francescane, often referred to as Religiose Francescane for short or
sometimes Soeurs Franciscannes. This information was given to
me by another former pupil of the school who is in her 60s.
3. That her lack of knowledge of grammar should be evident in her
reading of a text requires an explanation. The text was in Classical
Arabic, which has a case system of nominative, accusative, and
genitive marked, respectively, by the vowels o, a, and i; these are
not marked orthographically, and therefore the reader has to supply them when reading aloud. If the reader does not understand the
function of, say, a noun in the sentence structure, he/she may either supply the wrong case ending or not supply one at all. In this
way, the program director was able to tell that her knowledge of
the grammar of Classical Arabic was wanting.
795
796 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
bedded in histories and ideologies that may challenge

the hegemony of the state. The claims of rival institutions, such as the religious establishment, to the origin,
definition, propagation, and values of particular kinds of
symbolic capital render the states relation to the latter
problematic and ambivalent. Official linguistic practices may then seek to transgress the norms of usage established by rival institutions in order to transform the
problematic values of that symbolic capital.
Moreover, in the process of value reproduction, the
state may be hindered not only by historically antecedent rival claims but also by contradictions arising from
the exigencies of its economic policies. In Egypt, one of
the consequences of the global economy is a segmentation of the labor market that has produced a demand for
proficiency in European languages. The increase in the
number of foreign-language private schools has meant,
among other things, that Egypt now has two educational systems. Public state schools cannot satisfy the
demand for highly skilled foreign-language-proficient
labor, in part because the colossal state bureaucracy
needs to fill its own ranks with their graduates. Hence,
some state institutions reproduce values for the official
language, while others pursue goals and policies that
marginalize the currency of that language.
How does the official language become official? Bourdieu has argued that the dominant language is the
language of the dominant classes and that official languages achieve that status because of this relation.
However, French became the official language of France
long before anyone could claim that it was the language
of the dominant classes (Achard 1980). The relations between official symbolic capital, the dominant classes,
and the state are neither linear nor timeless, and they
need to be historicized for a more satisfactory theory of
social reproduction. What happens when the choice of
an official language is not guided by the speech habits
of the upper classes? And if, for a variety of reasons, the
highest posts and salaries go to those who are proficient
not in the official language of the country but in a foreign language, what becomes of the relation between
the official language and the dominant classes? These
are some of the central questions that are explored in
this study. A sketch of the sociolinguistic situation in
Egypt will help to contextualize the introductory anecdote and the issues on which the study will focus.
Arabic: A Background
The official language of Egypt is Classical Arabic, allugha al-arabiyya al-fusha the eloquent Arabic language, or fusha for short.4 The Quran and the most
significant religious, literary, and scientific texts of Islamic civilization are written in Classical Arabic. It is
commonly said that if one wants to learn the Arabic
language (i.e., Classical Arabic) well one has to study
4. The /s/ and /h/ are pronounced separately (fus-ha). The transliteration of Arabic terms in this paper is not phonetic.
the Quran. As in the rest of the Arab world, everyone

speaks as a mother tongue a nonclassical variety, ilammiyya the common (also called masri Egyptian in
Egypt), that is quite different from Classical Arabic and
that is generally not accepted for written purposes.5
Classical Arabic is viewed as the single most important
vehicle of Islamic civilization and culture in the Golden
Age.6 Endowed with these associations, it is a language
that embodies authority and bestows authority on those
who know it. It is primarily a written medium and is
not transmitted from one generation to the next
through a spoken, home language. Therefore it is only
through formal instruction that it can become accessible in understanding, reading, writing, and speaking.
The religio-cultural credentials of Classical Arabic have
produced and reproduced a strong ideology that exalts
it and devalues the living spoken languages (Hourani
1991:68).
As the official language of Egypt, Classical Arabic is
also the medium of education in public schools and in
the bureaucracy. State officials and presidents often
give their formal speeches in it, and government services send out information, notices, and bills in some
bureaucratic version of Classical Arabic. The printed
word is dominated by Classical Arabic, which is the
language of newspapers, journals, books of fiction and
nonfiction, and childrens books. As an oral medium of
communication, however, Classical Arabic is far more
restricted in its use. Thus, for example, while government clerks compose letters and documents in Classical Arabic, they rarely talk to each other in that language.
In contrast, Egyptian Arabic is the mother tongue of
elite and nonelite Egyptians. It has been the vehicle of
epic poems, folklore, plays, proverbs, and songs. The dialect of the capital, Cairo, has much national and regional prestige. Like other sedentary (as opposed to Bedouin) dialects of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic differs in
phonology, morphology, and particularly in syntax from
Classical Arabic.7 Notwithstanding persistent claims to
5. The al in al-lugha al-arabiyya and the il in il-ammiyya
are two different forms of the definite article. They reflect one of
the phonetic differences between the two linguistic varieties.
6. One example of many that could be given here to convey an idea
of how Classical Arabic was viewed, in particular, up to the 19th
century is from the writer al-Thaalibi (11th century): When the
Almighty ennobled and exalted the Arabic language, elevated its
ranks and showed greater regard to it than any other language, He
decreed for its safeguarding and treasuring a select people, the leaders of virtues, and the luminaries of the earth, who gave up lust
and roamed the desert land in its service; who befriended the notebooks, the bookcase, and the inkstand for its acquisition; and who
exerted themselves systemizing its rules, and dedicated their life
to immortalizing its books (quoted in Chejne 1969:14).
7. Classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic have consonantal and vocalic phonemes that are absent from the other variety (e.g., interdental series), and their phonotactics obey different rules. Morphologically, pronominal, tense, and aspect inflectional markers, the
definite/indefinite system, and negation are different; syntactically, among other differences, while Classical Arabic has a case
system of nominative, accusative, and genitive, Egyptian Arabic
has no case system (Spitta Bey 1880; Birkeland 1952; Mitchell
1956; Garbell 1978 (1958); Ferguson 1959a; Fleisch 1968, 1974).
h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 797
the contrary, Egyptian Arabic is the oral medium of

communication not only for the more mundane matters of daily life but also for discussion of literature, art,
religion, and philosophy. Indeed, unless certain features
of a speech event (Hymes 1974) warrant the use of Classical Arabic, it may be considered pompous and even
ridiculous. Thus, while in writing there are almost no
constraints on the choice of Classical Arabic, in speakingparticularly in face-to-face interactionsits use is
highly constrained.
Neither of these languages is a monolithic entity, and
each has its varieties. Egyptian Arabic has regional and
social varieties as well as more and less formal styles.
Classical Arabic varieties move along the axis of
older or newer syntax and lexicon and heavier or
lighter style, depending on the writer, the topic, and
the addressee.8 The speeches of public figures, academics, and others often make use of both (or many of the)
codesmore frequently with Egyptian Arabic as the
dominant choice interspersed with words and phrases
from Classical Arabic. The exception is that a written
text delivered orally is usually almost entirely in Classical Arabic.9
When the former arts censor spoke of the rustiness
of her Arabic, then, she was referring not to her
mother tongue, which is also Arabic, but to Classical
Arabic. The difficulties of the latters syntax in particular may be forgotten or remembered imperfectly in the
absence of continuous practice. Specifically, as we have
seen, the art censors grammar was deemed atrocious
because the case endings (al-iraab)10 of Classical Arabic
8. These terms are taken from speakers descriptions of textual varieties. In addition, although there is a strong belief, unceasingly
articulated by many writers, journalists, historians, and publishers,
that Classical Arabic is uniform and standard throughout the Arab
world (as opposed to the nonclassical languages), there are regional
differences particularly in lexical choice (see also Parkinson 1991).
9. While for written texts it is not often difficult to decide whether
they are in Classical or Egyptian Arabic (the latter is quite rare in
any case), in speech the determination can be somewhat more
problematic. Depending on factors such as pronunciation, intonation, how frequently used a classical word, phrase, or construction
is, how recently it has been borrowed, the expectations of listeners
and their various degrees of knowledge of Classical Arabic, an oral
text may be judged as entirely in Egyptian Arabic, whereas from a
historical point of view, it may include several elements from Classical Arabic. It may also be judged by some as grammatically faultless while others may find countless mistakes in it. There is an
interesting and difficult problem here that calls for further research: borrowed words, expressions, and constructions that are
frequently used gradually become integrated into and part of
Egyptian Arabic, hence the distinction between the judgment of
the listener/reader and that of the linguist. However, for such (often) stylistic resources to function as in fact stylistic they must
somehow continue to bear a mark of distinctness. I have argued
elsewhere (Haeri 1996) that such borrowed elements from Classical
Arabic in time come to be recognized as marking formal styles in
Egyptian Arabic. However, this is probably not the whole story, for
classicizing strategies are several, and to achieve various degrees of
eloquence or formality speakers/writers may classicize elements
that are generally not classicizedaiming to mark their language
unambiguously with elements that are recognized as classical.
Hence there is a continuous process of borrowing.
10. This is the technical term for case endings. Most Egyptians use
the term il-tashkiil. The subject of case endings is brought up quite
are entirely lacking in Egyptian Arabic, and since they

are not orthographically marked she could not supply
the correct ones.11
Why is Classical Arabic and not Egyptian Arabic the
official language of Egypt? The question will not be
fully answered here, but two crucial factors should be
mentioned briefly. First, Classical Arabic is the language of the holy Quran. This language had precedents
both in the poetry of the pre-Islamic era and in the humbler dialects spoken in Arabia. However, what became
codified in countless grammatical treatises, dictionaries, and concordances was the language of the Quran. In
addition to the consequences of codification, the common belief that the Quran represents the most perfect
example of Arabic (al-namuuzag al-alaa) perpetuates
an equation of the two, as if the origin of the language
were the holy book.
It is not only the Quranthe most significant text for
Muslimsthat is written in Classical Arabic but most
other significant texts, such as the sayings of the
prophet (ahaadith), the lives of the imams, the commentaries on the ahaadith, works of jurisprudence, canonical literary texts, grammatical and scientific treatises, and so on. Until the time of Muhammad Ali
(180548), education was in the hands of religious institutions and scholars. To make students literate meant
(and largely continues to mean) to enable them to read
and recite the Quran. A language that has been considered a central achievement of Islamic civilization and
the language of any text worth reading and teaching was
therefore a virtually unrivaled candidate for the official
language as well.12
Secondly, the ideology of pan-Arab nationalism that
became dominant in Egypt in the 1940s (Gershoni and
Jankowski 1986, 1995) saw many promises in Classical
Arabica language that would provide continuity to
the intellectual history of the Arab world, unite this
world politically, and alsocruciallyserve as a collective weapon against colonial domination.13 With the
often as the example par excellence for illustrating the difficulty
of Classical Arabic.
11. Although both the art censors mother tongue and the language
she was tested in are Arabic, Egyptians themselves mostly refer
to the latter as the Arabic language. In the context of foreign languages, Egyptian Arabic is also referred to as Arabic, but in general the term refers to Classical Arabic. The distinction is important on many levels for Egyptians. However, with the exception
of linguistic studies, it is missing from most writings on the Arab
world.
12. What went on during the reign of the Ottomans and later during British colonial rule insofar as the status of Classical Arabic is
concerned is relevant to this discussion but requires separate treatment. For the purposes of this brief background, it is important to
note that the educational institutions founded by Muhammad Ali
and his successors ended up with Classical Arabic as their medium.
13. Supra-Egyptian nationalism had been articulated and espoused
by figures and groups prior to the 1940s as well, in particular since
Egyptian writers were leaders in the literary revival of Arabic as
well as in the periodic debates over the possible alteration of its
structure and its script which occurred in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries (Gershoni and Jankowski 1986:15).
However, before the 1940s the idea of Egyptians separateness and
distinctness was more dominant.
emergence of newspapers in the mid-1800s, adaptations

of Classical Arabic for nonreligious mass-education
textbooks, and large translation projects of European
works (from military manuals to science and literature),
Classical Arabic was renovated to be more responsive
to the changing cultural and political demands of the
times (Stetkevych 1970, Cachia 1967).14 A very important boost to its renovation and dissemination also
came from the literary revival movement that began in
the late 19th century.15 Although it was this renovated
Classical Arabic that many pan-Arab writers and groups
saw as representing their goals and ideology, not all
Arab nationalist writers agreed either with the renovations or with the implied separation between Arab
and Islam and therefore with conscious linguistic
changes intended to disown that connection. This enduring dispute and the continued connection between
literacy and ability to read the Quran have not substantially challenged the strength of the religious genealogy
of Classical Arabic. And notwithstanding the attempts
of some leading figures in the early decades of the 20th
century to replace Classical Arabic with Egyptian Arabic as the main medium of writing and education, most
public figures and political organizations in this centurymen and women writers, poets, political organizers, and feministshave chosen to write in Classical
Arabic.16
A large number of sociolinguistic studies have found
that in speaking, women use Classical forms significantly and systematically less than men regardless of
14. Briefly, the renovation has consisted mostly in modernizing
the lexicon. In addition, the influence of the syntactic structures
of European languages from which much was and is being translated and those of the substratum nonclassical varieties has
wrought changes or at least expanded the possibilities of stylistic
variation for some writers (Stetkevych 1970). This, however, does
not mean that the fundamental features of Classical Arabic, such
as the requirement for case endings, were somehow done away
with (Cachia 1967).
15. Objection may be raised to the use of the term Classical Arabic here. If in fact it was renovated or many thought that it was,
why continue to use the adjective classical? There are several
justifications for the continued use of this term. First, the terms
equivalent in Arabic did not change. Secondly, Classical is used
here less as an adjective than as a fixed part of the compound name.
Thirdly, this objection is not often raised with other languages
such as English or French. Although the English of Shakespeare or
Chaucer is quite different from the English used today, we still
continue to refer to it all as English. A frequently used term for
the renovated version of Classical Arabic is Modern Standard
Arabic. This term, however, has no accepted equivalent in Arabic;
it was coined by a number of English-speaking Arabists in a meeting in the 1970s at Harvard University (Charles Ferguson, personal
communication).
16. A fuller discussion of whether there was a choice to be made
either in deciding on the official language of the country or for individual writers or organizations will have to be left to another occasion. The formulation in terms of choice is useful. With outstanding but rare exceptions such as Hodgson (1974), Hourani (1991),
and Gershoni and Jankowskis (1986, 1995) two-volume study, the
various tensions (such as local versus pan-Arab nationalism, social
divisions, the scholarly elitism of Classical Arabic, and educational
problems) resulting in part from the duality of the language situation have been ignored or underexplored in the literature, especially in the literature on nationalism in the Arab world.
their level of education or social class (Schmidt 1974;

Abdel-Jawad 1981; Royal 1985; Ibrahim 1986; Haeri
1987, 1994, 1996). In writing, however, this difference
seems to disappear. After the 1930s, the various political ideologies of Islamic modernism, secular nationalism, and pan-Arab nationalism, secular and otherwise, disagreed at times on the kind of Classical Arabic
that was to be propagated. However, none of these
movements chose Egyptian Arabic as its medium of expression. Since feminism in Egypt expressed itself in
both nationalist and Islamic terms (Badran 1995), feminists as well wrote in Classical Arabic.17
Thus pan-Arab ideology overrode other ideologies on
the issue of language. The language of pan-Arabism is
not the various divisive and lowly dialects but the
unifying and standard Classical Arabic.18
Linguistic Market, Labor Market, and Class

In any speech community there exists a hierarchy
among the linguistic varieties that are available. That
is, regional and social dialects, different ways of speakingpronunciation, phraseology, choice of words, and
intonationare not all regarded as the same or as
equal by members of the community. In part, class
associations account for evaluations that may be believed to be based on some objective criteria of superiority, correctness, and beauty of one linguistic form or variety in comparison with another.
Sociologists of language, anthropologists, and sociolinguists have used various constructs to explain the hierarchy of linguistic varieties within particular communities. Sociolinguists have repeatedly found linear
correlations in the frequency with which different
classes use standard and nonstandard forms. Specifically, they have found evidence of a coincidence between formal or standard forms and the speech of
the upper classes. While in casual styles of speaking differences between the classes are more pronounced, in
more formal oral styles and in reading all speakers shift
toward the same forms with different frequencies (Labov 1966, 1972, 1991; Trudgill 1974, 1983). At the same
time, the forms that speakers shift to are found to be
the most frequent in the speech of the members of the
upper classes (as compared with other classes). Sociolinguists do not treat this overlap between formal
17. The most important credential of any writer or intellectual continues to be command of Classical Arabic. It is quite common for
writers or others to comment approvingly or disapprovingly on the
Arabic of other writers or public figures. Hence, although some
women have referred to Classical Arabic as a male language, to
stand the chance of being read and taken seriously they must continue to write in that language (see chap. 5 of Haeri 1997).
18. There are a few voices in Egypt today that regard Classical Arabic as the language of the Arab invaders and colonizers. During
my last fieldwork I heard from several poets that there is a group
with a Pharaonic name that opposes Classical Arabic on that basis.
In the 1920s such sentiments were publicly and very hotly debated
by various intellectuals (see Gershoni and Jankowski 1986:chap. 5,
esp. 12429).
styles and upper-class patterns of speech as an accident.

Forms that come to be evaluated as the standard/official language are generally those used most frequently
by members of the upper classes. The speech of the upper classes has not been studied as extensively as the
speech of other classes, however. In one of the few empirical investigations devoted solely to the subject,
Kroch (1996) finds that upper-class Philadelphians have
a number of local dialect features in their speech but
that, by using local pronunciations in a phonetically
minimal way, [the upper class] shows, to the maximal
extent possible given its underlying dialect, that it is allied with the standard regional and national language
against the local one (Kroch 1996:43).
Sociolinguists generally use sociological indices to
determine the social class membership of their speakers. This practice has been criticized by a number of authors working within and outside the field (Milroy, L.
1987, Guy 1988, Eckert 1989, Milroy, J. 1992). Bourdieus (1977:659, emphasis added) view of the relation
between the official or standard language and the dominant group is no different, notwithstanding his more
nuanced conception of class:
We must pause for a moment to look at the relation
to language which characterizes the members of the
dominant class (or at least those of them who originate in this class). . . . Having acquired the dominant usage by early familiarization, . . . they are
able to produce, continuously and apparently without effort, the most correct language, not only as regards syntax but also pronunciation and diction,
which provide the surest indices for social placing.
. . . In short, the dominant usage is the usage of the
dominant class.
Thus insofar as the relation between the official language and the social dialect of the upper classes is concerned, the generalization that emerges in different research paradigms is an identity between the two (but
see Irvine 1985, Woolard 1985, Ibrahim 1986).
In the history of France, however, this equation
seems to be a relatively recent one. When in 1539 Francois I decreed that thenceforth all royal proclamations
and judgments were to be issued in French, the latter
was not the language of the elite (Achard 1980:175).
That process was gradual. At the time of the decree it
was simply taken for granted that French was to be the
language of the elite (1980:176, emphasis added). In
time, it in fact became so. Bourdieu himself, writing on
the language situation in France after the Revolution,
speaks of the anonymity of the emerging standard
French and of the aristocracy, the commercial and
business bourgeoisie and particularly the literate petite
bourgeoisie who had more access to the official language but who spoke their own dialects (Bourdieu 1991:
47). Hence for France, as for other places, the claim
needs to be historicized.
In the course of two periods of fieldwork in Cairo totaling 19 months (198788, 199596), I interviewed and
came to know many kinds of speakers, from those who

had not had any schooling and were, for example, janitors and maids to skilled workers, diplomats, and physicians with advanced degrees. I will consider the life experiences and trajectories of the top professionals and
bureaucrats that I interviewed as the source of a cumulative linguistic profile characteristic of members of the
dominant classes.
With very few exceptions, speakers from these classes
turn out to have received their education in a foreign
language in Cairo, Alexandria, or other cities and
towns.19 Many have attended private Catholic missionary schools in which the main languages of instruction
are English, French, Italian, and so on. The official language is taught at these schools as a subject a few hours
a week. Not all private language schools (madaaris allugha) teach in a foreign language, but most do. In any
case, from elementary school onward, those attending
private foreign-language schools had been taught to read
and write in a foreign language and not in the official
language. Such speakers often comment on how bad
their Arabic is and describe their knowledge of it as
quite limited because of the kind of education they received. In addition, the classes they represent are regarded and stereotyped by others as unfamiliar with
fusha. Such a stereotype was also found in two earlier
studies of Cairo and one carried out in Irbid, Jordan
(Schmidt 1986, Royal 1985, Sawaie 1987). Yet statements to the effect that fusha is used by the elite in
the Arab world are common in the literature (Chejne
1969, Altoma 1969). Were we to interpret this claim as
a noncircular one, it would seem to imply that fusha is
closely linked to the dominant classes. Ethnolinguistic
fieldwork suggests that the direct link between the
dominant language and the dominant groups does not
hold in Egypt. Members of the upper classes are not the
ones who know the official language particularly well
(Haeri 1996).
We might ask how hegemony is related to language
abilities and use. What is the relationship between the
dominant classes, the state, and the official language?
Bourdieus elaboration of how linguistic value is reproduced provides a paradigm for the study of such questions. He writes (1991:66):
Linguistic exchangea relation of communication
between a sender and a receiver, based on enciphering and deciphering, and therefore on the implementation of a code or a generative competenceis
also an economic exchange which is established
within a particular symbolic relation of power between producer, endowed with a certain symbolic
capital, and a consumer (or a market), and which is
capable of procuring a certain material and symbolic
profit.
19. The educational background of the upper and upper middle

classes, along with some of the implications of Bourdieus framework, were first explored with more limited aims in Haeri (1997).
He goes on to say that the value or the price of linguistic

varieties on the market is determined in comparison
withor against the value ofthe official variety. He
emphasizes the role of institutions such as the school
and family in creating and perpetuating the value of the
official variety on the market. However, he points out
that it is only to the degree that the educational system
controls access to the labor market that it plays this role
(Bourdieu 1982:33).
To what degree does the state educational system in
Egypt control access to the labor market? What is the
relation between the speakers linguistic capital and the
labor market? The occupations of the upper- and uppermiddle-class people I have interviewed make it clear
that it is their foreign-oriented education and their
bi- or multilingualism that is important and not their
knowledge of the official language. Occupations such as
ownership of small and large businesses (construction,
boutique, pharmacy), medicine, television production,
positions in international banking firms, research, and
movie and stage acting, for example, are not linked to
knowledge of Classical Arabic. Even for positions that
are far more directly related to the state bureaucracy,
such as diplomatic ones, there seem to be variable requirements regarding the official state language. A
young diplomat told me that he had all along been educated in English. I asked him whether he had to write
official letters at times in Classical Arabic, and he responded: Oh, yes, but thank God for my secretary. I
tell her what I want to say, and she writes it for me.
Within the diplomatic corps there seems to be a hierarchy of proficiency required for different posts. Another
diplomat, a woman who had been educated in German
and in fact addressed her daughter in German when the
latter came in for some cookies in the midst of our conversation explained to me that her application to the
foreign ministry had met all the requirements except
that she had had to pass a written examination in fusha.
She said that (much like the arts censor) she had had to
take an intensive crash course to pass the exam.
It is not that the upper classes are wholly ignorant of
Classical Arabic. Although they do not receive their degrees in the official language and although the stereotypical image of them is one of limited knowledge,
some can and do use Classical words and expressions in
their speech when conditions call for it. Speakers the
world over use borrowed words from other languages or
from learned varieties without knowing those languages. Thus lack of knowledge on the part of the upper
classes does not mean that they do not use learned borrowings for various purposes. In addition, depending on
the particularities of different positions, some do learn
the official language well enough to use it orally and in
writing without help from their secretaries.
Access to which labor market, then, is controlled by
the public schools which in turn contribute to determining the linguistic value of the official language?
The largest employer requiring knowledge of the official language is the stateits public institutions, such
as the schools, and its colossal bureaucracy. Those who
teach and those whose jobs involve reading and writing

government documents have to have some knowledge
of it. Yet it is clear that the degree of this knowledge
required by the state varies according to status, role, and
occupation. In a state hospital, for example, physicians,
nurses, directors, and public relations agents will have
different language-skill requirements.
There are thus two educational systems in Egypt: a
public one supported by the state and a private one,
missionary and secular, in whose curricula the state has
some say but that is largely independent of it. Historically the fact that missionary schools belong to religions other than Islam does not seem to have been regarded as a major obstacle by their Muslim clients.
There are data on attendance by Muslim and nonMuslim pupils starting from the mid-1800s that show
continuous increases in the Muslim student population
(Heyworth-Dunn 1939, Matthews and Akrawi 1949).20
Bourdieus identification of the labor market as the
primary determinant of linguistic value is borne out by
these data but only in part. In Egypt, generally if one is
a member of the dominant groups one does not have
more of what others have less of; rather, one has entirely different capital. Thus the relation between the
educational system, the labor market, and knowledge of
the official language is not the same for all classes. The
public educational system does not control all access to
the labor market and thus is not alone in creating linguistic value. Nonstate private education does not always contribute to the creation of different linguistic
values. In the United States, the public and private education systems do provide their clients with access to
somewhat different labor markets, but both reinforce
one standard variety of English. In Egypt, the segmentation of the market has helped create multiple and at
times contradictory linguistic values.
A third and related issue is Bourdieus insistence on
a fully integrated linguistic market (see also Woolard
1985, Gal 1989, Collins 1993). He writes (1982:6667,
my translation):21
It is true that the definition of the relations between symbolic forces that are constitutive of the
20. A few women in their 60s who had attended the Franciscan or
other similar schools said that they were sent to these schools not
because their parents wanted to send them to foreign schools but
because they were the best schools around. One reported that her
father became distraught upon hearing that his daughter was reading the Bible, attending mass, and learning catechism, but she continued her education in that school.
21. Il est vrai que la definition du rapport de forces symboliques
qui est constitutif du marche peut faire lobjet dune negociation
et que le marche peut etre manipule, dans certaines limites. . . .
Mais il va de soi que la capacite de manipulation est dautant plus
grande, comme le montrent les strategies de condescendance, que
le capital possede est plus important. Il est vrai aussi que lunification du marche nest jamais si totale que les domines ne puissent
trouver dans lespace de la vie privee, entre familiers, des marches
ou` sont suspendues les lois de formation des prix qui sappliquent
aux marches les plus officiels. . . . Cela dit, la loi officielle, ainsi
provisoirement suspendue plutot que reelment transgressee, ne
cesse detre valide.
market can be made the object of a negotiation and

that the market can be manipulated within certain
limits. . . . But it is self-evident that the capacity to
manipulate is as large, as can be seen in strategies
of condescension, as the available capital is important. It is also true that the integration of the market is never so total that the dominated cannot find
in the space of their private lives, among friends,
markets where the laws of price formation applicable to the most official markets are suspended. . . .
That said, the official law is temporarily suspended
rather than transgressed.
With respect to Egypt the linguistic market does not
seem to be so integrated. To what degree can we speak
of a fully integrated market in any community where,
as a consequence of a variety of historical and social factors, several educational systems or differential paths of
social mobility emerge and provide access to the labor
market? One could pose this question for any number
of Third World societies where social markers such
as origin, skin color, religion, and language forcibly
limit the possible trajectories that lead individuals to
the labor market. In fact, the same can be said about
societies such as the United States. Woolard articulates
this criticism in her work on Catalonia, where, for different reasons, the historical institutional dominance of
Castilian has not meant its recognition as the higherstatus variety in comparison with Catalan. As she describes her finding (Woolard 1985:741):
In Barcelona, in spite of the institutional dominance
of Castilian, the use of Catalan evoked significantly
more positive evaluations along the axis I have
called status, from both Catalan and Castilian listeners. The very same speakers were judged to sound
more intelligent, cultured, leaderlike, self-confident,
and hardworking when speaking the marginated language, Catalan, than when speaking the official
state language, Castilian.
An integrated linguistic market assumes the near-total
hegemony of the state. Woolard criticizes this claim because Bourdieu seems mechanically to read hegemony from institutional domination. The claim may also
be questioned on the grounds of the differential linguistic consequences of the capitalist world economy in
Egypt versus, for example, France. In Egypt, the state
has not achieved such a high degree of hegemony, and
what I have said so far regarding the production of linguistic value and the segmented labor market provides
part of the answer as to why that should be the case.
The State and the Reproduction

of Symbolic Capital
It is not wholly clear whether the state in Egypt can or
would necessarily benefit from the total hegemony of
Classical Arabic. On the one hand, there are the consequences of becoming part of the capitalist world econ-
omy, in which fusha lacks currency and which brings

with it a demand for labor that is proficient in foreign
languages. Indeed, privatization and increased foreign
investment are among the hottest topics in Egypt these
days. On the other hand, the state seems ideologically
ambivalent toward a language whose most perfect exemplar is believed by all to be the Quran. In other
words, the history of Classical Arabic and the meanings
and associations it has accumulated do not allow the
state to treat it as unambiguous symbolic capital. To assume that states would always find in linguistic hegemony more power to be harnessed to their advantage is to
assume a chain of historical relations among the state,
the dominant groups, and symbolic capital that is predictable and timeless. Specifically, it means assuming
that the state has no rivals in its claims to the symbolic
capital of the official culture of the country and that
that symbolic capital would simply reinforce rather
than challenge its hegemony. I would argue that there
may be historical and ideological constraints in realizing that wish. At the very least, the state has to struggle
to make the hegemony of the official culture beneficial
to its own interests.
Beginning with Muhammad Ali, nonreligious educational establishments were set up. The first of these
were for training soldiers in the modern military arts.
Since most books on such arts were written in European
languages, a large-scale translation project was undertaken to make such books accessible to the trainees.22
In time, elementary schools were set up and textbooks
written for the purposes of mass education, and this
process continues to the present. It is a process that has
marginalized the rival religious schools with the result
that their variety and number have been declining in
the past few decades.23 So long as education was entirely
in the hands of religious institutions and individuals,
values produced for the language were consistent with
its history, its claims to religion and divinity, and the
interests of the religious establishment. The latter
largely controlled the definition, uses, and historical associations of Classical Arabic. Al-Azhar mosqueuniversity (founded in 972), brought increasingly under
state control in this century, is the oldest educational
establishment in the country. For generation after generation, the shortage of teachers for the increasing number of state schools was filled by none other than the
sheikhs of al-Azhar. The trend has ebbed only in the
22. To my knowledge, no studies have been carried out as to
whether there were any discussions or debates at this juncture
about the language such texts were to be translated into. It is safe
to assume that the majority of the soldiers had at most some rudimentary knowledge of Classical Arabic. Therefore, to what degree
would the translated texts (some of which were translated into
Turkish) have in fact been accessible to them?
23. Strictly speaking, this is not wholly accurate. The old religious
schools, sometimes connected to a mosque and sometimes not, often set up in one room in the teachers house or other similar
spaces and supported by remunerations from parents, have been
disappearing in particular in urban areas, but private Islamic
schools with high tuitions and simultaneous emphasis on foreign
languages have been cropping up in the past few years.
past few decades as other institutions (e.g., the Dar alUlum) have managed to produce graduates of their own.
Al-Azhar continues to offer education from elementary
school to graduate work in several fields. It controls a
small part of the labor market, but its graduates generally end up with low-paying jobs. Doctors and engineers
out of al-Azhar do not often manage to compete well in
terms of salaries with those educated abroad or in other
universities. Students who pursue any of the religious
subfields or attend the language college generally end
up as preachers, schoolteachers, judges, professors, and
administrators, and for those out of the language college
there is also the option of working as correctors (musahhih, employed by newspapers, magazines, and book
publishers to correct in particular the grammar of all
that is published).24
What is important insofar as the relation between the
state, the labor market, and the reproduction of value
for the official language is concerned is that some graduates of religious institutions continue to procure jobs
because of their knowledge of Classical Arabic not as a
bureaucratic, secularized language but as a religious
language. Professional reciters of the Quran, teachers
for kuttab schools (where the recitation of the Quran is
taught to younger children or adults), professional correctors in particular for the many religious texts that are
published each year, and so on, thus have a path toward
social mobility not provided by state schools. So long
as such arenas exist the state does not fully control the
reproduction of linguistic value for the official language.
If the state has managed to marginalize formal religious schooling, it has not been able to divorce the official language from its religious genealogy. That speakers often talk about the relation between Classical
Arabic and the Quran as if the language originated with
the holy book shows perhaps a kind of amnesie de la
gene`se (Bourdieu and Boltanski 1975:3) insofar as the
history of the language is concerned. However, the amnesia that the state would prefer would concern the
equation of the language with the Quran and hence
with the claims of the religious establishment to that
language in general, and that does not seem to have happened.
In taking over mass education, the state has also assumed some of the tasks and curricula of religious
schools. As was mentioned earlier, all classes are taught
in public schools in some version of Classical Arabic.25
The subject of Classical Arabic is divided into texts,
rhetoric, composition, literature, syntax, and recitation.26 In these classes, students learn of the inseparabil24. See Eickelman (1978) for a view of religious education in Morocco.
25. Communication between pupils and teachers is very rarely in
Classical Arabic. However, the textbooks are, along with whatever
the student is expected to write. Some high school and college students told me that there are teachers who are more fair than others because they accept correct answers even if they are not written
in fusha or contain grammatical mistakes.
26. Nusuus, balaagha, insha, adab, nahw, and qiraaa, respectively.
ity of al-lugha al-arabiyya from religion through their

study of the Quran up to their last year of school (that
is, for 12 years), and they are also taught how to pray
(the formulaic five-times-a-day prayers are in Classical
Arabic)tasks that used to be performed by religious
schools. Hence, public state schools reproduce values
for the official language that are products of secular
usages (geography, math, history, and so on)27 and simultaneously values that reinforce the dominance of
religion and its institutions over that language. The
state, in other words, is constrained in constructing full
claims to its official language.
One could draw a parallel between the relation of the
state to the official language and its relation to sharia
or Islamic law. Both are mentioned in the Egyptian constitution, one as the official language of the nation and
the other as the basis for its legal system. However,
even more problematic than the language situation, the
state at times faces insurmountable contradictions in
its dealings with legal suits and rulings that seem to
conform to the sharia but not to its desired path toward
privatization, Europeanization, and Americanization.
Simultaneously, in taking over mass education and
the media and founding publishing houses, the state has
become the largest propagator of fusha outside of religious contexts. Given its uneasy relation with its own
official language, the state can undertake attempts to
transform its values through planned and unplanned
processes that are set in motion by its own institutions
and by other institutions.
Transgressions of an Official Language?

Bourdieu concedes that the integration of the market is
never total, but, as we have seen, he concludes nevertheless that when the laws of price formation do not
apply the official law is temporarily suspended rather
than transgressed. Thus he allows for a negotiation
and suspension of the official law in the use of the
nonofficial varieties. This assertion has been criticized
for ignoring resistance, contestation, and the dynamics
of power and solidarity (Woolard 1985, 1989; Gal 1987;
Giroux 1983; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991), and there
is yet another aspect of it that bears reexamination: that
only nonofficial linguistic practices may transgress the
norms of appropriate use.
In the world of the written and printed word, fusha is
used in contexts and for topics the exact nature of
27. It might be argued that such subjects were also taught by religious schools of higher learning such as Al-Azhar. Were these then
secular usages? The scholars who wrote on astronomy, geography, history, or mathematics were themselves renowned religious
figures. There was no rival context for intellectual pursuitsnor
were such topics seen as fundamental divisions or departures from
religion. Moreover, for a religious establishment to use texts other
than purely religious ones and teach other topics pursued by religious scholars reinforces rather than challenges the hegemony of
the establishment. The teachings reproduce values for the achievements (language included) that are seen as products of the power
and strength of their religion.
whose appropriateness is rather difficult to determine.

For example, in the vast market of printed material easily available from the many street vendors and bookstores that Cairo is famous for, one can buy comic strips
such as Mickey28 or translations of Tintin in fusha (see
also Douglas and Malti-Douglas 1994). A bit more surprising is the publication of books with cover pictures
of half-nude women, sold in plastic bags and marked lilkubaar faqat for adults only, also in fusha. In fact, one
can also find in these books a large bismillah al-rahman
al-rahim in the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate on the very first page.
Other examples may be found on almost any commercial product that requires a Directions for Use
and/or a Cautions section. Fire extinguishers, nasal
sprays, insect repellents, detergents, electricity bills,
late-payment notices, cosmetics, and so on, all provide
writings in some version of the official language.29 Indeed, given the explicit veneration that is communicated through teaching materials in Classical Arabic
courses, the first time I saw a fire-extinguishing capsule
in a taxi with a set of instructions in a rather difficult
version of Classical Arabic, I wondered how the language of the Arab-Islamic empire had ended up on this
humble capsule.
On the level of the metapragmatic norms of Arabic
speech communities that have been passed on from
generation to generation, there is a definite idea of linguistic appropriateness. The pedigree of Classical Arabic, the body of religious, literary, grammatical, philosophical, legal, and scientific texts produced in that
language, and the continued teaching of many such
texts have established its domains of appropriate use as
those of high culture. Such norms of usage are only
reinforced by the fact that the reading-writing elite in
the Arab world, though far more numerous in this century, remains relatively small.
But then Mickey, televisions Power Rangers, and
magazine interviews with Omar Sharif all turn out to
be in fusha. Are these not transgressions of appropriate
usage for the official language? Bourdieu assumes that
the official language is always elevated through institutions. What kind of elevation of the official language is
represented by these examples? What set of values propels these publications? What institutions make these
decisions, and on what basis? How would the religious
establishment respond, for example, to a book on diet28. Up to the early 1980s, Mickeys dialogues were written (or
translated into) in Egyptian Arabic. As yet it is unclear why the
change to fusha occurred at this time. However, pressure has been
mounting for some time on those who produce material for children; it is argued that if children get used to the use of Classical
Arabic on all occasions their knowledge of it will increase and they
will begin to use it more frequently.
29. Cosmetic companies such as Lancome produce brochures praising their products in many languages including Classical Arabic.
This is the case whether the product is produced in Egypt (as used
to be the case with Lancome) or abroad (e.g., Nina Ricci). There
is some irony in this situation: most women who can afford such
products would probably have an easier time reading French or English rather than Classical Arabic.
ing with a picture of Madonna (the singer) on its cover

but written in some version of fusha? Elevation or its
lack aside, changing contexts of usage can be examined
with respect to the states claims to modernity and
progress, as these and similar instances illustrate.
Although the state is not always involved in such
transgressions directly, it is probable that over time the
written use of the official language in all contexts from
the mundane to the transcendental and from the sacred
to the profane bleaches its strong associations with religion. It is also possible, and not inconsistent with the
above, that the older Classical Arabic of canonical texts
may become a variety unto itself, separate from all
other kinds of Classical Arabic. These are processes that
have probably already started, although they are complicated by a number of factors some of which have already been mentioned. Some writers choose to write in
particularly archaic styles, and dictionaries do not update, as it were, their lexicons, with the result that
words and expressions from distant centuries are cited
together (Badawi and Hinds 1986).30 Historical contexts
of use may, however, prove more enduring than the
wishes of individual writers or even of institutions. For
example, some of the idioms that secular writers use in
the hope of appropriating them have very strong historical associations with Islam. The word umma is a case
in point. Used in the Quran and later religious texts, it
means the nation of believers in the sense of the nation constituted by all Muslims. Secular writers often
use this term to refer to the Arab nationthat is, the
pan-Arab nation that also includes people of other
faiths. How successful these appropriations are remains
to be investigated. It is also probable that in these official transgressions the state is aided by the claims of
pan-Arab nationalist writers and their considerable output. As was mentioned earlier, their claims to this language have been articulated less in relation to its Islamic pedigree than in nationalist terms. Many such
writers have explicitly argued that Classical Arabic is
not just a religious language and that it can and should
be used for all purposes (see, among others, Hussein
1954[1944]).
Anderson (1983) argues that translations of the Bible
into the humble vernacular languages marked the beginning of a process of linguistic secularization, as well
as the emergence of nationalism in western Europe. In
the absence of translations of the Quran into Arabic vernaculars, perhaps the use of that language for all printed
materials, whether on dieting or on the lives of the
imams, is another way in which a language can be secularized or, better, appropriated. Given the degree of
30. This point is made in the introduction to the Dictionary of
Egyptian Arabic by Badawi and Hinds (1986). Badawi, an Al-Azharand Dar al-Ulum-trained linguist who has been teaching at the
American University in Cairo, has pointed out this problem many
times, most recently in his presentation at the January 1996 conference The Arabic Language and Scientific Culture in Cairo. As
Badawi and some other scholars see it, since the Arabic language
is not supposed to change, dictionaries do not discard words that
have fallen out of use.
control the state exercises over the media, we could argue that it seeks the hegemony of Classical Arabic
while transforming its problematic values.
Some recent examples of state activities with regard
to the value of Classical Arabic will illustrate this point
further. In December 1995, the daily Al-Akhbar reported that the state was not following the Egyptian
constitution by lowering the minimum passing grade
for Arabic while raising it for foreign languages such
as English and French (Al-Akhbar, December 19, 1995).
In addition, two of the best-funded conferences that the
Ministry of Culture sponsored in the first half of 1996
were a four-day international conference on Egypts and
the Arab worlds best-known nonclassical poet, Beyram
El-Tonsi, and one on pre-Islamic poetry.31
Moreover, the fact that Egyptian Arabic dominates in
oral communications renders it dominant as well in the
nonprint media: almost all movies and most television
and radio programs are in Egyptian Arabic. These staterun media have taken over some of the functions of the
mosque and of religious schools. Programs are interrupted to broadcast the call to prayer, there are recitations of the Quran, Quranic lessons, and discussions of
Islamic law, and so on. It may be no accident that the
single most popular religious personality, Sheikh Mitwalli Al-Sharaawi, whose lessons in tafsiir (interpretation of the Quran) are televised weekly, is also a favorite of the government. Sheikh Sharaawi is said to be
the first to conduct the tafsiir in a charismatic style of
Egyptian Arabic.32 In fact, a professor of Classical Arabic
remarked that if someone were to transcribe the
sheikhs programs, we would have the first written
translation of the Quran into an Arabic vernacular.33
Still on the subject of media, we can return to the
case of the former official arts censor. First, it may be
noted that given the rustiness of her Arabic, the requirements of the exam for the position of radio broadcaster were such that in 67 hours of study she had
managed to pass it. Second, it seems that she became
an announcer in the early 1970s, whereas, on the basis
of my own recordings of radio and television in 1988
and 199596, I found that with the exception of news
31. It should be briefly noted that Hosni Mubarak, the president of

Egypt, speaks in Egyptian Arabic in most of his public appearances.
It is a very studied style that is supposed to convey qualities such
as down-to-earthness, reasonableness, and simplicity. Only when
he delivers written speeches does he speak in Classical Arabic.
One of the most frequently cited characteristics of Nasser, perhaps
the most popular Egyptian and Arab president in his time, is that
in his public speeches he often broke into Egyptian Arabic.
32. What goes in the mass media both in terms of form and content
and the power struggles represented by various social divisions and
ideologies require far more detailed treatment. The cassette market
and less frequently the videotape market are full of series of
Quranic recitations (in different styles), Quranic lessons, and sermons of various sheikhs, often serialized according to topic. See
Eickelman (1992) for a discussion of mass communication and
mass higher education in other parts of the Arab world.
33. Also in Khartoum during the 1960s, Abdullah Al-Tayyib did
Quranic tafsiir in nonclassical Arabic which were broadcast on the
radio (Talal Asad, personal communication).
broadcasters and those hosting a few specific programs,

most announcers spoke Egyptian Arabic (at times using
formulaic expressions from Classical Arabic). It is probable that the language-skill requirements have changed
or are flexibleagain depending on the particular program, its audience, and so on.
The segmentation of the labor market and its role in
the language situation in Egypt are affected by nonWestern powers as well. The influence of the Gulf
states, in particular Saudi Arabia, has been increasing in
the past decade. Not only does the Gulf continue to be
host to Egyptian workers by the thousands but also it
makes large loans and grants to the government.
Among urban lower-middle-class families it is rare to
find one without a son, son-in-law, or father who has
worked in one of the Gulf countries (see also Singerman
and Hoodfar 1996). Such contact and such economic dependence result in cultural influences as well: importation of television programs (often from Kuwait) for children such as an Arabic version of Sesame Street and
many foreign cartoons dubbed in Classical Arabic (AbuAbsi 1990, Palmer 1979), the availability of Saudi newspapers in Cairo, large numbers of Saudi editions of religious books, and an increase in the number of young
women who wear head scarves. Some Egyptians seem
to believe that in Saudi Arabia, in contrast to Egypt,
people routinely speak Classical Arabic in their daily
interactions. This belief was often voiced in the context
of discussions of which government in the region is
more faithful to Islam. Therefore, images and realities
of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries also have implications for the values of Classical Arabic. Thus, in its
present and its past, the Egyptian state is not wholly unfettered in the reproduction and transformation of its
own official language.
Conclusion
In Egypt as in other places, power and language are related, but the relation is not always linear or free of contradictions that are a product of the tensions among the
various sources of power. The state, the dominant
classes, and the religious establishment have varying
and changing degrees of power with regard to the official language and the reproduction of its values. Earlier
a question was posed concerning hegemony and language choice in Egypt. Part of the answer to the question lies in the differential relation of the state to the
dominant and nondominant classes vis-a`-vis the official
language. One cannot get a mid-level or low-level job as
a government clerk without a certain proficiency in the
official language, but one can get a diplomatic post,
since it comes with a secretary who knows the official
language. If knowledge were always to equal power, the
educated (lower) middle classes would have far more
power than they do, since on the whole their proficiency in the official language is usually greater than
the upper classes. Thus, the state as an institution
reproduces different values for the official language.

To say that the linguistic market in Egypt is not fully
integrated is to say, in part, that the states relation
to the official language is multidimensional and ambivalent.
My central theoretical concern here has been the reproduction of symbolic capital and the role of the state
in that process. What kinds of limitations and obstacles
would the state face in its attempts at social reproduction? Without recognizing the specificities of the history of particular kinds of symbolic capital and the existence of multiple sources of power, it would seem that
the state simply chooses to reproduce certain kinds of
symbolic capital and proceeds to implement that choice
through its institutions. It follows that the complete hegemony of an official symbolic capital historically
claimed by a rival institution may not be to the states
benefit. The official status of any given symbolic capital, therefore, does not render the states relation to it
transparent and unproblematic. Unable or unwilling to
supplant it by another, the state may seek to change, if
not its genealogy, then its appropriate contexts of use
in order to reduce the strength of its historical associations.
We therefore need a theory like Bourdieus that addresses the role of institutions in producing and reproducing values but one that also integrates the exigencies of history and those of a wider linguistic market.
In addition to taking account of internal contradictions
between state institutions, such a theory would further
problematize the relation between the state and the potentially multiple social bases of any given symbolic
capital whose values are to be reproduced. As Carnoy
has remarked (1982:105), an explication of the dynamic
emergence of power is absent from Bourdieus theory:
The implication of the analysis is that the source of
power is power itself: being dominant allows you to reproduce your dominance through the institutions of society that you control because you are dominant. It
gives you control over knowledge, learning, attitudes
and values. The foregoing explication of the case of
Egypt shows that in the process of value reproduction
the existence of power may be taken for granted, but not
its workings.
Comments
j a n b l o m ma e r t
University of Antwerp, Pragmatics Research Center,
Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk Belgium.
30 v 97
The image of the Arabic-speaking world held by many
observers is based on cultural-linguistic and religious
uniformity and monolithism. Haeris article offers us a
number of important qualifications to that image, docu-
menting the difficult and multifaceted relationships between language, religion, social structure, and power in
Egypt. It is a fine piece of modern sociolinguistic observation of significant documentary value and an interesting complement to her book (Haeri 1996).
Haeri structures her argument around a critique of
Bourdieus view of the linguistic marketplace. The critique is not uncommon, and it identifies the overly
static and homogeneous notions of the state, power, and
society in Bourdieus work, opposing them to evidence
which points to a more heterogeneous, fragmented, and
dynamic profile. Haeris basic claim is that Bourdieus
view should be completed with a theory that also integrates the exigencies of history and those of a wider linguistic market. One could make this more precise and
add that a theory such as Bourdieus requires a combination of historiographic and ethnographic investigations
of the particular sociolinguistic dynamics in any given
society. At the same time, one could say that Bourdieus
theory offers precisely such opportunities for research
and that the conclusion of any such research should
point towards a historicization and ethnographization
of Bourdieus own findings.
Haeris critique is well directed, and it offers counterevidence against (a universalized interpretation of)
some crucial notions in Bourdieus theory: the all-toosimple image of a dominant class in relation to (an often
singular and uniform) body of symbolic capital, the alltoo-simple mechanics of reproduction of symbolic capital (involving the role of the state and of institutions),
and the notion of transgression. But at the same time,
this procedure of critique involves the opposition of
highly simplified propositions to propositions that are
the result of fine-grained and highly nuanced research
and the adoption of a rhetoric which calls for highly
uniformizing and homogenizing notions of state, society, power, and so on. Thus, in her attempt to dismiss
the type of across-the-board judgment which she associates with Bourdieu, Haeri actually has to adopt the
same lexicon and frame of reference.
Thus, in her discussion of transgression, she starts
from the Bourdieuan thesis that fusha, because it is
Egypts official language, should be the language defended and protected by the state. In the same move,
the indexical repertoire of fusha is said to be controlled
by Islam. We thus arrive at a highly unlikely picture of
a state which has elevated Gods language to the language of the people, inserted itself in a secularizing and
Pan-African movement, and attempted to establish full
hegemony for its symbolic resources. In other words,
we are supposed to understand the politics of fusha simply by looking at the policies related to fusha. I doubt
that any sociolinguist familiar with the history of language in Third World societies would defend such a descriptive pattern. The national languages of the Third
World are rarely those of the masses of the people, and
there is only rarely an attempt to make them in fact the
languages of the nation. National languages also do not
automatically command high status among citizens.
For one thing, the official language hierarchies and
even the so-called dominant language hierarchies can

be called into question, altered, or strategically manipulated depending on variables such as domain, participant framework, or activity type (Rampton 1995). Despite the fact that Lingala was the language of the power
center in Mobutus Zaire, it was often negatively
marked in relation to political identity (as the symbol
of dictatorship) and positively marked in domains of leisure and entertainment (as the medium of Zairean pop
music and Kinshasa highlife). Its widespread usage often went hand in hand with strongly negative attitudes
(Meeuwis 1997). In Tanzania, the national language
Swahili carried high status only in political contexts (as
the symbol of independence, African identity, and socialism), whereas the politically despised English (the
language of colonialism and imperialism) enjoyed the
highest status in socioeconomic contexts and contexts
in which upward social mobility was at stake (Blommaert 1992). In all these cases, who talked to whom,
when, why, and how was of major importance in making status assessments, and across-the-board statements
on dominant indexical values of languages proved extremely difficult.
The discussion of transgression thus makes sense
only insofar as there is a clear set of fixed rules that can
be transgressed. The historiographic and ethnographic
bias of Haeris article already precludes such a possibility, and the pattern of linear associations between the
state, power, and symbolic dominance is quite unrealistic when applied to Third World states.
I would suggest that the kinds of assumptions
sketched by Haeri as input elements for her discussion
represent a particular tradition of interpretation of
Bourdieus work but do not do justice to the rich possibilities that work offers. Rather than as a critique of
Bourdieu, I prefer to read her article as an elaboration
and enlargement of some of Bourdieus views.
j oh n r. b o w e n
Department of Anthropology, Washington University,
St. Louis, Mo. 63130-4899, U.S.A. 30 v 97
Haeris clear and fascinating paper contributes to anthropology in two important ways: by using data to reformulate theory and by adding a new layer of information to an important area of current empirical research.
First, she uses her knowledge of the sociology of language in contemporary urban Egypt to question and
then supplement certain prominent theoretical statements by Pierre Bourdieu about the economy of language. She cogently points out that Bourdieus general
claim, that the dominant classs language becomes the
dominant language, is invalid for Egypt, where two
somewhat independent socioeconomic hierarchies
roughly, secular and Islamicproduce two different
valuations of linguistic competence. Yet because she focuses on these general, rather overly magisterial pro-
nouncements by Bourdieu, Haeri misses the potential

contribution of his empirical work on France to her own
project. Let us accept that Bourdieu continually makes
the mistake of generalizing from France to the world
that this trait is characteristic of Parisian intellectualsand then ask (a) whether his analysis is valid for
France (a question we cannot take up here) and (b) what
changes when the same questions are asked of another
society. Miche`le Lamont (1992) has carried out b for the
U.S./France contrast to great effect: I suggest that Haeri
take the same tack, contrasting France/Egypt (and not
Bourdieu/Egypt). It appears that the major distinguishing characteristic is the general acceptance in France
but not in Egypt of the idea of a single hierarchy of cultural, including linguistic, competence. In other words,
even though people think, know, and act differently at
different class levels, they all acknowledge (or do not)
that there is a single ranking of cultural items. Haeris
work offers a striking and to my reading convincing account of one way in which the metapragmatics of
symbolic competence is differentiated.
Secondly, Haeri adds a valuable linguistic dimension
to current studies of media, religion, and politics in
Cairo. (Curious here is the absence of references to
these studies, which nicely parallel her own; particularly apposite would be a comparison with Yves Gonzalez-Quijanos [1994] thesis on Sheikh Al-Sharaw, a
figure about whom Haeri has very interesting things to
say.) To Gregory Starretts (1966) historical ethnography
of the states ambivalent attempts to control religious
education in Cairo (a forced hand would be more exact),
Haeri adds an analysis of the states ambivalence towards Classical Arabic. To the extent that the state
adopts Classical Arabic as official, it risks losing or at
best sharing its control with the religious hierarchy because of the languages generally accepted genealogy in
the Quran and thus in God.
Haeri gives us a description of the current distribution of competence in and use of Classical Arabic and
an explanation of certain features of that distribution.
She notes that although Classical Arabic has strong religious associations it is found in many highly profane
using that word in all the possible wayssettings. She
is puzzled by this fact, a puzzle that may have resulted
from a rather Durkheimian assumption that because
the language is given a sacred origin it requires protection from profanation. And yet the Classical/sacred relationship seems to be more complex than this, given
the languages long association with education and with
print culture. She also might have made more of her excellent point that in fact both Classical and Egyptian
Arabic admit of several varietiesperhaps some more
religious than others, such that Egyptian Arabic laced
with scriptural quotations becomes more religious
than its Classical but not scripture-quoting counterpart? In any case, her answer to the puzzle remains
rather unsupported: that the state sought to widen
the uses of Classical Arabic in order to reduce the
strength of its historical associations. Such a set of actions may have taken place, but no evidence is offered
here. What about a different scenariothat the state

(or certain figures and ministries) sought to channel religious education and in the process also contributed to
a widening of Classical Arabics contexts? (Such seems
to be suggested by Starrett 1996.) Only detailed political-historical evidence would argue for one or the
otheror for some other storybut Haeri has raised
fascinating issues for further comparative and historical
analysis.
j a m e s c o l l i ns
Anthropology Department, University at Albany/
SUNY, Albany, N.Y. 12222, U.S.A. 3 vi 97
A common way of understanding the relation between
language and class, confirmed in much sociolinguistic
research in the United States and England, is that there
is a unidimensional relation between hierarchies of linguistic preference and class hierarchies. Not surprisingly, there is also a widely reported connection between class/language and the state, an equivalence or
identity between the official [standard] language and
the social dialect of the upper classes. However, while
this scheme may be roughly accurate for the United
States and Western Europe, it clearly does not hold for
Egypt. There the official language, Classical Arabic,
which is the language of public schooling, state bureaucracy, and a valued religious and literary tradition, is
the language not of the upper classes but rather of the
(lower) middle classes. The upper classes are educated in a private school system, and they learn foreign
languagesEnglish, French, Italian, and German are
mentionedin order to secure positions in business,
entertainment, research, and banking.
The linguistic, educational, and class system(s) of
Egypt call into question Bourdieus (1977, 1991) arguments about the relation between linguistic value and
economic value. As the article shows, Bourdieus arguments about the dominant usage, the binary metric
of linguistic value (unofficial vs. official variety), the
control of the labor market by the education system,
and the fully integrated nature of the labor market are
each and all undermined by the Egyptian facts. Haeri
investigates reproduction of symbolic capital, engages
the work of Bourdieu on this topic, and develops the argument via analysis of the complex sociolinguistic situation in contemporary Egypt. Her analysis and argument complement those provided by Woolard (1985) for
Catalan in Spain, Gross (1993) for Tamazight in Morocco, and Swigart (1996) for urban Wolof in Senegal.
These studies also show that we cannot assume, pace
Bourdieu, a unity of language, state, and economy, in
particular when dealing with nations whose states are
relatively weak. This papers specific theoretical contribution is to emphasize the importance of internal contradictions (e.g., between official language and labor
markets) and historical constraints (Islam as a rival authority to the state in official language matters) when
examining the role of the state in symbolic reproduction.

This much said, some questions remain about Egypt
and theory. The article concisely establishes the relation of Classical Arabic, foreign languages, and masri,
but given that masri is the spoken and written language
of all Egyptians, is there no significant internal diversity? How is good masri inculcated and enforced?
Who speaks masri badly, and to what effect? We are
told that one (apparent) strategy to undermine the Islamic claim on Classical Arabic is to popularize its use.
Instructions for appliances, Mickey Mouse comic
books, and labels on packets of lewd pictures are now
written in the classical language, which would certainly
seem to desacralize the indexical associations of the
language. However, we are also told (n. 26) that until
the 1980s the comic books were written in/translated
into Egyptian Arabic and that since then there has been
mounting pressure (a policy?) for all written materials for children to be in Classical Arabic. This raises
some questions: What value does the ability to read and
write Egyptian Arabic have in school and in various job
markets? Is it a marginal literacy or a fully flourishing
tradition, also capable of challenging the status of Classical Arabic in fields of endeavor outside the state bureaucracy?
The mention of fields brings me to two general
points. This article and the related studies mentioned
above rightly criticize Bourdieus overly holistic accounts of social domination. They emphasize instead
disjunctions between institutions, economic processes,
and symbolic practices, as I have also argued (Collins
1993). However, the positions criticized are dated. It is
the vagaries of publication and translation that make
the arguments about official language in Language and
Symbolic Power seem current. They were written in
the seventies, collected (1982), and translated without
substantial change (1991). Bourdieus work on fields,
largely developed in Distinction (1984) and The Field of
Cultural Production (1993), offers a more current and
nuanced account of class relations and symbolic practices. His analyses of field-specific symbolic struggles
offer more historical, sectorally differentiated perspectives on the interactions of language, class, and state.
Guillory (1993) uses the concepts of field and cultural
capital in an analysis of the English literary canon that
emphasizes the role of the school in allocating access to
privileged language practice during substantial changes
in class structure. The analogies with Haeris sketch of
public and private education in Egypt are worth investigating. Finally, this article rightly stresses the contradictory and negotiated nature of hegemony, but I think
this emphasis is already found in Gramsci (rather than
Bourdieu). Donald (1983) provides a Gramscian analysis
of hegemony that is pertinent to the current paper. It
deals with class conflicts, political negotiation, and language standardization processes in 19th-century England, and it provides what Haeri calls for: an analysis
of symbolic reproduction that recognizes internal contradictions and . . . the constraints of history.
m a d i ha d os s
CEDEJ, 14 Gameyat El Nisr St., Mohandessin-Dokki,
Cairo, Egypt. 11 vi 97
Haeris assertion that ammiyya is generally not accepted for written purposes should be tempered, since
it is becoming less true every day. The use of ammiyya
has spread in writing and even in print, although remaining limited in Egypt. Appearing first in poetry,
ammiyya has spread to prose of literary and then of
nonliterary nature. In a recent case, a piece of literary
criticism was written in ammiyya (in Adab wa Naqd,
April 1996). Ammiyya is also spreading to advertising
and written public announcements. This increasing use
can be explained in terms of the development of the Arabic language and the evolution of the respective functions of ammiyya and fusha in the changing context of
Egyptian society.
Since the 1950s Classical Arabic has been learned by
huge numbers of Egyptians. The quality of teaching has
been declining for many reasons, among them rapid
population growth, low investment in education, and
the migration of teachers. Consequently, the written
use of modern Classical Arabic (or literary Arabic) has
come closer to the spoken register. People can be literate without having mastered literary Arabic, and the result is the use of written Arabic in mixed registers.
Classical Arabic has evolved tremendously, as Haeri
points out, and although changes are seldom acknowledged and standardized they acquire wide distribution
in private as well as public domains. A study I conducted on a Cairo public writer showed that this person,
intended to be a link between the citizens and the state
institutions, used an oral variety of literary Arabic.
Thus knowledge and use of literary Arabic is highly
variable, ranging from a version close to the norm to a
much freer variety permeated by colloquial and oral influence.
It is hard to believe that a person could get along
without having to use Arabic in any social context in
Egypt. The question is which Arabic is being used. Very
few parents would give up on Arabic entirely; how
would their children, males in particular, function
without knowledge of the national language? However,
neither the secretary nor the employer needs to master
literary Arabic at a high level; some form of it is sufficient.
It is certainly no longer the case that students attending foreign-language schools are not taught to read
and write in Arabic. In the area of private education, the
foreign schools are mainly limited to the foreign
communities residing in Egypt, although it is true that
some Egyptian children have begun attending these institutions as well. However, most of what constitutes
foreign education takes the form of language
schools, schools that teach a foreign language along
with Arabic. The curricula of these schools are set by
the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and the teaching of
the official language is obligatory. Students are taught
Arabic for about 15 hours a week and also learn history
and geography in Arabic; scientific subjects are taught

in the foreign language. There is little independence of
the state in educational matters; examinations are general to all systems, public and private (except for the foreign schools).
In assessing foreign-language education it is important to know how and what variety of this language is
taught. If the language-teaching process involves the
transmission of a particular culture along with linguistic ability, how does this process operate in Egypt? My
observation through teaching reveals that code-switching from Arabic to any foreign language has become the
dominant form of exchange in classrooms; foreign languages are appropriated to Arabic, formally and culturally. This phenomenon must be taken into account in
any discourse on Westernization, academic or political. It would be erroneous to deny that there is a strong
tendency towards the adoption of foreign languages and
that the labor market is more accessible to those who
control foreign languages, but this does not imply the
exclusion of Arabic. Rather, Arabic has lost its aura, and
its elevated use is ignored by most people; the diplomat,
the censor, the public writer, and the layman will all,
to different degrees, be more familiar with a popular variety of this language.
A major problem is the difficulty of determining a
unified cultural and linguistic profile of the dominant
classes. It is clear that they are Western-oriented, at
least in terms of consumerism (both material and cultural), but more detailed studies are needed to assess the
quality and nature of this Westernization.
a l l e n d. gr i m s h aw
2211 Woodstock Place, Bloomington, Ind. 47401,
U.S.A. (grimsha@indiana.edu). 29 v 97
Most people, with the possible exception of those living
in remote, monolingual societies (and there will be
awareness of differential control over rhetorical skills
even there), see command of language varieties as a
source of social capital or simply as a social resource.
Little more documentation of this fact is needed than
that people imitate what they perceive as socially more
valued varieties and/or actually try to learn them. However incompletely qualified, Bourdieus assertion that
some varieties are worth more to their owners than
are others is indisputable even if not novel.
Equally indisputable, of course, is Haeris observation
that more is involved in the value of different codes
than which variety in a society is the official language and the question of whether the official language
is used by a dominant class. Haeri writes, Power and
language are related, but the relation is not always linear or free of contradictions that are a product of the
tensions among the various sources of power. Her
demonstration of this view using the Egyptian case as
exemplar is interesting and convincing. The questions
she poses are to the point. Importantly, one cannot read
her piece without thinking of a number of other inter-
esting questions about the language-power relationship.

Rather than addressing Haeris arguments directly I will
identify and briefly discuss some additional questions
made manifest by those arguments.
Three of Haeris questions can profitably be elaborated: (1) What constitutes the dominant class? (In colonial India Hindus learned and Muslims rejected English,
and Hindus gained in dominance relative to Muslims
both being subordinate to their British masters.)
(2) What is an official language, and are some more
official than others? (There are in India two official
Union languages [Hindi and English], a number of official languages of individual states, dozens of regional
languages, and hundreds of mother-tongues. Since Independence there have been self-immolations over language policies, the creation of linguistically based
states, and court actions over enforcement of mothertongue education policies. Which language is dominant?) (3) Exactly what religious, economic, and ideological factors (and histories) constrain the interaction
between class dominance and the social-capital value of
an official language? (In Mexico the Spanish colonial
power couldnt even decide which language should be
official [Heath 1972]. In the U.S.A. English is clearly
dominant but, to this juncture, not official. In India proponents of vernaculars tried to suppress the use of English [an official language] as a teaching medium [Grimshaw 1959].)
A second set of questions, perhaps implicit in Haeris
passing mention of schools with different foreign languages as media of instruction, has to do with how one
or another nonofficial language can come to be dominant or simply preferred. At first thought it might seem
that the language which would emerge from such a
struggle for preeminence would be that which has the
greatest value as social capital. Two sets of considerations are relevant here. First, and mundanely, access to
opportunities for learning different languages will not
be equally distributed, and some languages may be
avoided because they are perceived/recognized as being
more difficult to learn. Second, it may well be that
speakers criteria for assigning value as social/cultural
capital to languages may themselves varyone or another language may be valued or disvalued as a carrier
of different contents (business or fine arts) or rejected
because of negative associations (English with the
U.S.A., Arabic with Islamic fundamentalism, or whatever).
A third set of questions has to do with the interaction
of control (in varying degrees) over different language
varieties and perceptions of ones own identity and the
identities assigned to selves by others as well as issues
of collective identities of people who share similar linguistic capital. As Weber has told us, hierarchies of
prestige and esteem and even of power exist side-by-side
(indeed, there are frequently multiple class or status hierarchies within a single society). Skilled speakers of
fusha, of vernacular Egyptian Arabic, and of English or
French or another foreign language may each have their
own identity constituencies. What about the sense of
self-identity and of esteem of, for example, a monolingual imam as contrasted with a polylingual merchant?
Again, members of the same society may see the acquisition of new or greater competencies in different languages as routes to more valued identitiesor as simply being instrumentally useful. Capital is itself a very
complex notion.
This complexity is manifested in code switching and
other varietal selection. It would be interesting to explore the cultural-capital ramifications of situational
and metaphorical shifting between Ranamal and Bokmal in Hemnesberget, for example (Blom and Gumperz
1972). Considerations of the benefits of code switching
are more directly addressed in Myers-Scotton (1993).
Consider also the cultural-capital implications of selection of written codeshow can we explain the choice
of fusha for comic books, for example, or the fact that
Aleuts embraced literacy in Aleut and Russian but not
in English (Ferguson 1996)? How can we explain the
roughly comparable instances of colonization in which
religion has spread but not language (Spanish colonization of the Philippines) and others in which language
has spread but not religion (French colonization of Algeria) (Ferguson 1996)? Or why some language maintenance and/or revitalization efforts succeed and others
dont? More broadly, what can be supposed to be the
cultural-capital implications of choices of orthography
for new written languages?
And then there are questions of language, cultural
capital, and social change . . .
d e l l hy m e s
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, Va. 22903, U.S.A. 29 v 97
Haeri brings valuable perspective to bear on the situation she addresses. I would like to extend what she
writes with three considerations.
1. In pursuing the issues Haeri raises one may find it
desirable to go beyond her final remark that in the process of value reproduction the existence of power may
be taken for granted but not its workings. One may
need to go beyond a single term, such as power, to
a cluster of terms, such as authority, competence,
performance, identification, advantage, and perhaps pleasure or gratification, tracing those which
are relevant ethnographically.
2. I hope that someday there may be a full-scale portrait of at least northern Egypt as a configuration of language choices and practices, one that would extend to
audiences and performers such as those described by
Dwight Reynolds in his Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes
(1995). There at the other end of the social scale a kind
of symbolic capital is involved as well.
3. The rise of work on Europe in terms of language
contact and regions provides many situations which
could contribute to an adequate perspective on the reproduction of symbolic capital, locally as well as at the
level of the state. The paper by Gal, cited by Haeri,
notes several of them. Ethnography and comparative

ethnology should inform each other.
helma pasch
Institut fur Afrikanistik, Universitat zu Koln, 50923
Cologne, Germany (amal4@rsl.rrz.Uni-Koeln.DE).
1 vi 97
Haeris article seems to have no clear objective: on the
one hand it reads like a critique of a marxist-based theory deemed half-baked and on the other like a critique of the use of Standard Arabic in contexts for
which, according to the author, that language appears
unsuitable. On the basis of her own observations of the
linguistic situation in modern Egypt, the author criticises Bourdieus theory of social reproduction and his
construct of a linguistic market, a model based on a historical analysis of the sociolinguistic situation in
France. She might have succeeded better in refuting this
theory if she had made greater use of Woolards (1985)
and Achards (1980) arguments. She would also have
better succeeded in explaining the different modes of interaction of the sociolinguistic and economic situations
and the political authorities in France and Egypt if she
had more fully analysed the relevant differences between the two societies. Haeri correctly states that the
analysis of a segmented sociolinguistic situation in
terms of a linguistic market (according to Bourdieus
model) does not work but without modifying the model
or presenting a better one. I will compare the complex
linguistic situations of the two societies in terms of the
sociolinguistic stratification of society and the different
types and degrees of prestige of the various strata. I will
also question Haeris notion of a direct causal relationship between the linguistic basis of the segmentation of
Egypts educational system and the linguistic basis of
the segmentation of the labor market.
Though Haeri does not say so, her description of the
sociolinguistic situation in modern Egypt clearly shows
that from a socioeconomic point of view a complex case
of overlapping triglossia1 obtains rather than one of diglossia as presented by Ferguson (1959) (which is not
even mentioned): spoken Egyptian Arabic constitutes
the substrate (L), Standard Arabic (with a wide range of
variants more or less close to Classical Arabic), albeit
the official medium, is the midstrate (M),2 and the European languages have the function of superstrates (H).
France before 1539 was likewise triglossic, but the functions of the different linguistic strata were different: the
official and written medium, Latin, was the superstrate
language; one of its descendents, French, which functioned inter alia as the medium of instruction at the
university, was the midstrate; and the local vernaculars
had the function of substrates. Citing Achard, Haeri
claims that French was not the language of the elite, but
1. The term triglossia was coined by Mkilifi (1971).
2. The term midstrate, referring to a linguistic layer between the
superstrate and the substrate, was coined by Pasch (1997).
this claim goes too far. Achard (1980:17576) calls

French a vernacular, though without specifying who its
speakers were, but this in no way implies (nor does
Achard state) that French was not the language of the
elite.
What the French and the Egyptian situations have in
common is that in both cases the official and written
medium is an international languagefor which no
standard is codified within the nation, in which competence is not widespread among the population, and
which is practically never used as an oral medium. The
difference between the two sociolinguistic situations
results from the presence and absence, respectively, of
language loyalty towards the classical official language
by the groups in powera sociolinguistic category of
which Haeri appears to be unaware.
In France in the days of Francois I there was no institution strong enough to defend the status of Latin;
hence, for those in power, loyalty to Latin did not pay.
Rather, as Achard explains, the elites were happy with
the institutionalization of French as superstrate, as this
would maintain their social distance. It must be
stressed that this language choice was made for the sake
of these elites, who held political, judicial, and economic power and thus controlled the linguistic and the
labor market and whose language was in fact French,
while most population groups continued to use their
own local dialects (Achard 1980:176). In Egypt, by contrast, language loyalty is in fact so strong that Standard
Arabic is used even in contexts where Haeri would consider it inappropriate (e.g., on perfumes, in comic strips
like Mickey or Power Rangers, or in directions for the
use of fire extinguishers).
It is highly significant that the religio-cultural and political prestige of Standard Arabic is not matched by its
socioeconomic functions. Since the modern economies
of Egypt and other Arab countries must compete in the
international market and thus are not under the control
of the government, European languages have assumed
the role of superstrates. As a consequence, the labor
market in the Arab countries, and not only in Egypt, is
segmented. In the one sector, comprising administration, public schools, universities, etc., which are controlled by the state, as well as in the mass media, a very
high competence in Standard Arabic is required, a competence which is provided by public education. The
other sector depends on the free world market and
hence demands competence not only in European languages, as Haeri states, but even more so in the technical, economic, and scientific skills which can be acquired effectively only through the vehicle of European
languages and hence in the missionary schools and in
universities other than the state-controlled mosqueuniversity Al-Azhar.
The segmentation of the educational system is, however, a result not of this segmentation of the labor
market but of the difference in the quality of education in the two educational systems, especially in nonlanguage-related subjects. If doctors, engineers, and others from private universities get better-paid jobs than
those from Al-Azhar, this indicates quite clearly that

they are seen as better qualified. Their competence in
European languages cannot in itself play a direct role
here in a country where these languages are hardly used
for oral communication (e.g., between doctor and patient). And it cannot be denied that their training in
Standard Arabic must be much better than stated by
Haeri; otherwise it would be impossible for someone
educated in a private school to be able to improve his/
her atrocious grammar in only 67 hours of instruction as Haeri reports. I wonder how members of the upper class working in administration, government, and
diplomacy can require correct use of Standard Arabic
from their subordinates (i.e., middle-class writers,
teachers, clerks, and so on) if they are not themselves
proficient in it and hence are unable to control the
work. It is surprising that Haeri did not try during her
field research to verify to what degree the conventional
wisdom that the middle class has better competence in
Standard Arabic than the upper class actually reflects
the reality. When dealing with their counterparts from
other, especially distant Arab countries, all Arabs have
to use this variant anyway. The proficiency of those
who are not obliged to practice the standard language
regularly may of course in the long run decrease, so that
in the end they must depend on the linguistic skills of
secretaries, especially for written communication. It
should, however, be stressed that such conditions are in
no way restricted to Egypt or the Arab countries; they
can be observed to various degrees with managers and
people in high economic, administrative, and governmental positions all over the world, irrespective of sociolinguistic stratification and the structure of the linguistic market.
I believe that as long as public education in Egypt
concentrates on the acquisition of Standard Arabic to
the neglect of other linguistic and professional skills,
students will not be able to get sufficient training to assume better-paid jobs in the free market but at best will
be qualified for the state-controlled market, where good
oral and written competence in Standard Arabic remains the decisive prerequisite.
Reply
n il o o f a r h a e r i
Baltimore, Md., U.S.A. 14 vii 97
A number of very interesting questions are raised in
these commentaries. Some are as excellent as they are
difficult to answer satisfactorily. I shall begin with a
few general remarks.
The present article and my recent fieldwork in Egypt
were both inspired in part by the work of Bourdieu and
questions of social reproduction in general. I have found
his theoretical concerns, in particular with regard to the

valuation of linguistic varieties, quite relevant to my
own research agenda. My critique was meant to be an
elaboration and enlargement and not merely a criticism (Blommaert). Although a comparative study of
France and Egypt (Bowen) or any other two or more
countries would be of great empirical and theoretical interest, it would still have to be done within a certain
framework. Using Bourdieus framework, I attempted
to make it speak to a particular locality. In addition,
since Bourdieu is so well known and prolific we have
not only his own writings but a discursive Bourdieu (see
Calhoun 1993) the updating of whose many and at
times contradictory views takes longer than examining
those of the writer himself. In critiquing Bourdieu one
is therefore inevitably also addressing his discursive
versions as well.
The idea that official/dominant languages, the upper
classes, and the state are related to each other in linear
ways is, as Collins points out, a common understanding
held by many scholars. The concept of the speech community used widely in all kinds of sociolinguistic research is similar in fundamental ways to the idea of an
integrated linguistic market. Within a speech community, while there may be many different ways of speaking, all share evaluations of linguistic varieties (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog 1968, Labov 1972)that is,
the community is integrated in such a way that regardless of sociological distinctions evaluations are shared.
Yet, being aware of a hierarchy of values is not the same
as sharing in the sense of professing such valuesan assumption embedded both in the concept of a speech
community and in that of an integrated linguistic market. The linearity or unidimensionality (Collins) of
these relations is a widely held position that still invites
critique and is not dated. (Incidentally, in this regard
Blommaert seems to have understood me to say the opposite, and I refer him, in particular, to the section entitled The State and the Reproduction of Symbolic Capital and to my conclusion.) In any case, while in the
concept of a speech community the role of the state and
that of the market is left unarticulated, that role is central to Bourdieus concept of the integrated linguistic
market, as it is to the analysis of the present article.
One of the claims I made with regard to the historical
role of the state in Egypt was its widening of the use
of Classical Arabic in order to lessen the strength of its
associations with Islam. I do not wish to imply that volition on the part of the state is necessary, though Bowens reading seems to indicate that the wording of the
claim allows for this interpretation. My aim was to
bring to light some of the processes, full of tensions and
contradictions, that have been set in motion. Although
the state is a major player in these processes, no particular entity has full control over their various outcomes.
In this connection, I called attention to the contradictory aims of different state institutions and to the roles
of print culture and of different kinds of schooling that
result in simultaneously elevating and devaluing the official language. Thus Bowen is certainly correct to say
that the state has tried to channel religious education.

At the same time, this scenario and those that I have
elaborated are not mutually exclusive. Starretts study
of textbooks and religious literature for children (which
I read, unfortunately, long after completing this study)
supports my analysis that several simultaneous processessometimes contradictory, sometimes not
have been at work.
A historical study of public and private school curricula and clients is very much needed at this point (Doss).
Heyworth-Dunn carried out just such a study in 1939.
According to the data that he provided (and some offered by Matthews and Akrawi 1949), roughly from the
mid-1800s, a sizable portion of the students of foreignlanguage schools were Egyptian children. These schools
always taught their Egyptian clients how to read and
write Arabic, but the number of hours and the subjects
taught in that language have changed over the years.
Speakers over 40 told me that they had been taught Arabic 45 hours a week. The 15 hours a week that Doss
mentions has therefore not always been the case. With
regard to the lack of independence of these schools from
the state, it should be mentioned that not only are all
such matters empirical questions but also we must be
careful not to assume that what is happening now has
always been the case.
Still on the role of the state and its relation(s) to
fusha, the issue is not so much the protection of
fusha from profanation as the transformations (or
lack of them) in its valuation (Bowen). To analyze this
process, it is crucial to examine the contexts in which
it has come to be used (print culture, education, commercial products, etc.) and who initiates, controls, defines, and influences those contexts. If, for example, the
state allows a foreign company to open a local factory
and a decision is made, perhaps following standards set
outside of Egypt, to write instructions for use and precautions on the product in the official language of the
country, the state has a role in this outcome but not one
whose various consequences can be said to be the result
of any specific volition with regard to the values or future of its official language.
That said, as Collins seems to suggest in citing Guillorys book, an analysis of cultural capital should be the
result of a detailed political economic analysis and at
the same time must go beyond it. Fusha, for example,
has a variety of values for many who pray in it, listen
to Quranic recitations, learn to perform recitations
themselves, are moved by speeches in it from trusted
politicians, and so on. Such values need to be studied,
articulated, and integrated with its sociological valuations. Guillory (1993:333) points out that from the sociological point of view, the experience of any pure
aesthetic pleasure is of no interest at all, since it can
safely be assumed that no work of art can be experienced without also experiencing at the same time its
status as cultural capital. But this is to say that aesthetic pleasure simply falls outside the sociological
field as a merely hypothetical experience. I have no
doubt that in order to understand the values of fusha for
different groups of Egyptians, their lifelong and complex

experience in uttering its words or listening to it must
be a part of our analyses.
Grimshaw similarly states that speakers have a variety of criteria for assigning value as social/cultural
capital to languages. This brings me to two excellent
questions, one regarding the value of knowledge of
Egyptian Arabic in schools and various job markets
(Collins) and the other regarding a comparison of the religiosity of Egyptian Arabic laced with scriptural quotations as compared with Classical Arabic without
such quotations (Bowen). I will respond to each in turn.
There is very little written on the value of competence
in the varieties and styles of nonwritten languages.
How does one investigate the value of knowledge of a
language that is not taught in schools, whose commitment to writing in that context is often a reason for the
lowering of ones grade, and in which there are no examinations and no certificates to obtain? Insofar as various
job markets are concerned, one could say that in most
job markets knowledge of it is valued to various degrees, but this value is not formalized because knowledge of the mother tongue is taken for granted and is
more essential than knowledge of fusha. One cannot get
by without being able to speak it. Within the same state
institutions that require various degrees of knowledge
of fusha, the latter would be necessary but not sufficient. A foreign student with excellent knowledge of
fusha but no proficiency in Egyptian Arabic would not
qualify.
To approach this question in a more systematic way,
we must note that Egyptian Arabic has its own styles
and hierarchies (Doss, and see Haeri 1996). Lower-class
Egyptian Arabic is often referred to as baladi. At the
same time, when someone speaks bad Egyptian Arabic the same word is used to characterize itroughly
meaning, in this case, vulgar. There are various versions of this term, such as baladi awi, very vulgar or
provincial, or baladi baladi for emphasis. The cultural
importance of this term and the variety of its significations are explored in El-Messiri (1978). Speakers of a
good Egyptian Arabic should have no remnants of rural
dialects in their speech, should command a variety of
its styles, and where necessary may use learned vocabulary from fusha and foreign borrowings that have become nativized. The foregoing conveys some idea of
which job markets would be more likely to be open to
knowledge of or greater proficiency in which kinds of
Egyptian Arabic.
Further, although Egyptian Arabic has not seen codification, it has undergone standardization. No grammar
of Egyptian Arabic has been published in Arabica factor which has greatly contributed to the belief of many
Egyptians that their language lacks grammar. The first
serious dictionary appeared in 1986. In certain respects,
however, it has undergone standardization as a spoken
variety. Centuries of urbanization in Cairo resulted in
the creation of a distinct dialect that takes on the same
associations as that of the city: cosmopolitan and a center of culture and economic activity. To answer the
question of the value of knowledge of a mostly spoken

language will require some analysis of the relations or
lack of them between codification and standardization.
Of course, codification without a tradition of writing
is not quite possible, and this brings me to one of Dosss
statements. It is true that writing in Egyptian Arabic is
becoming more acceptable. At the same time, the ideology that has vigorously dictated against it is one that is
centuries old. In my recent fieldwork, I interviewed a
number of publishers, large and small. Other than
books of poetry and a few short stories, they could not
point to a single book that they had published in Egyptian Arabic. To this brief list we must add plays, whose
dialogues have been and continue to be written in Egyptian Arabic while stage directions and other thoughts
by their authors are in fusha. I asked these publishers
about, for example, Egyptian history books, books on
sociological topics, and so on, but again they could not
think of any. There is clearly no flourishing tradition of
writing in Egyptian Arabic other than poetry and plays.
It is often casually said that the reason for the lack of
books in Egyptian Arabic is economicpublishers
want to sell in the entire Arab world and not just in
their own country. Some publishers explicitly denied
this and said that the reason had to do with writers. One
editor remarked, Someone has to dare. That recently
one or two newspapers have begun publishing regular
(but brief) columns in Egyptian Arabic and that some
advertisements are now written in that language are
quite significant but in no way deny its persistent
though, for some, decreasing unacceptability (see also
Haeri 1996: chap. 6).
Returning now to the question posed by Bowen in relation to the religiosity of varieties, the problem is not
so much measuring the degree of religiosity of what is
clearly religiousit is likely that the speech of someone speaking Egyptian Arabic while using frequent
scriptural quotations would be considered religiousas determining, when fusha is used outside of
religious contexts and lacks any religious content,
whether for different listeners it still carries associations and resonances with the language of religion. Certainly fusha can be and has been used in secular contexts; it is the understandings, interpretations, and
impressions of listeners/readers that is at issue. Dosss
discussion of linguistic varieties, with her great example of the public scribe, is relevant here. Which varieties
of fusha have what kinds of associations and resonances
and for whom? At this point what I can say is that there
is not and cannot be a single answer to the question.
Egyptians who encounter fusha throughout their lives
in mostly religious contexts and those who acquire advanced degrees and regularly engage in reading and writing, for example, are likely to have different associations with this language.
One of the most interesting issues brought up by the
question of individual and collective identity (Grimshaw) is the tension between fusha as the language of
Islama language of a pan-Arab identity (incidentally,
I did not speak of the pan-African movement men-
tioned by Blommaert, whose history and ideology is not

quite relevant here) that is no ones native language
and the national languages of the various Arab states.
Simultaneously, since fusha is no ones mother tongue,
it becomes fully claimable only vis-a`-vis outsiders; that
is, Egyptians, Syrians, and so on, cannot tell each other
that this is their language but in confronting the West
fusha becomes exactly thatthe language of the Arabs.
Such tensions to my knowledge have been left unexplored in the vast literature on nationalism in the Arab
world (again with the exceptions mentioned in the article). Given what some Arab writers have referred to as
linguistic schizophrenia or dualism, how are individual, national, and pan-Arab identities reconciled? I
do not ask this question rhetorically. It is clear that
manyperhaps mostArabs do in fact perform some
reconciliation, but we know far too little about what
this process and its tensions entail. Many pan-Arab nationalist writers have long expressed their hope that
this dualism will cease one day and a language will
emerge that reflects the religious and cultural achievements of fusha while not disowning the local language
entirely. Ferguson, who used the term diglossia (borrowing from Marcaiss diglossie) to characterize this
setting, reiterated his 1959 position in a revisiting of his
views by stating that there will continue to be two
poles (Ferguson 1991, Belnap and Haeri 1997). Whether
or not such a prediction proves correct, the implications
of the issue for identity remain underexplored (Grandguillaume 1983). If we add to this dualism Dosss
great question on the transmission of culture along
with linguistic ability in foreign-language schools, we
get an idea of the complexity of identity issues in Egypt.
Without a defamiliarization of facts, views, orthodoxies, and transformations, ethnography risks becoming a
mere jotting down of what is directly observable. Moreover, the general underexploration of the implications
of the sociolinguistic setting in the Arab world, with its
various local specificities, motivates me to analyze and
write in terms of puzzles (Bowen). In particular with
regard to language use, the sacred/profane dichotomy is
one whose boundaries are rarely absolutethere are
continuous shifts and transformations, and these shifts
and transformations have been and continue to be sites
of intense ideological battles. Without the puzzle of
the profane use of fusha, these battles become even
more difficult to understand. To this day, both in my
own interviews and in various literary and academic
journals, fusha is said to have qudaasa, that is, sacredness, so it is not clear what Blommaert means when
he says that the state has elevated Gods language to
the language of the people. I explained some of the significant reasons the state would choose fusha as its official language. Fusha has never been nor is it now the
language of the people. Nor, if it were ever to become
that, would anyone consider it an elevation. A majority of the people that I interviewed said that they do not
even attempt to speak it because they are afraid of making mistakes in it (Haeri 1996). The increasing movement of written fusha into popular domains (quite
different from fushas becoming the language of the

people) is lamented for various reasons by many people. There are, for example, constant complaints that its
use in those domains (newspapers and even works of
fiction) is full of mistakes and that it is becoming vulgarized. Parkinson (1991) reports that the grammarians
at Dar al-Ulum routinely complain about the fusha of
Naguib Mahfouz (the Nobel prize-winner for literature),
arguing that he does not know the language well. It goes
without saying that the opposite claim is made by those
who consider Mahfouz a cultural icon and a national
treasure.
Blommaert claims that unless there is a set of fixed
rules that can be transgressed there cannot be any
transgression. He does not offer any reasons for this or
identify any relevant domains in which we might find,
for all times and for all people, a set of fixed rules. Yet
languages change all the time, and some of these
changes for some speakers are transgressions. This is
the case unless we assume a linear relation between
power and transgressionthe powerful cannot transgress. From the point of view of the history of fusha, its
use by Power Rangers or Tintin is a transgression. It is
difficult for some to imagine that standard English
can ever transgress, but it is clear that its usage in some
contexts is a transgression for some speakers. Indeed,
the use of linguistic varieties in inappropriate contexts
is an important mechanism for the creation of ridicule
and humor. Outside of language, from what is considered pure/impure or what is edible or not to Gods rule
versus humans rule, there are rarely fixed rules. Would
one therefore have to conclude that no violations can
take place? That said, for some people there are indeed
some fixed rules in certain domains. The writer of a recent novel called Maraaii al-Qatl (The Killing Fields)
included a long postscript in which he attempted to justify why he had decided to violate a number of fushas
grammatical rules (Imbabi 1994). This novel won a prize
which further fanned a controversy that had started to
brew in the press. There was in particular one article in
the daily Al-Ahraam with the headline: Is It a Writers
Right to Change the Rules of Language? Thus, apparently for some, there were some rules that had been
transgressed. But, as I have argued, a fixed rule is not a
necessary condition for transgression to take place.
With Hymes, I hope that there will soon be a fullscale portrait of northern Egypt. I find it impossible to
reply to Pasch other than to repeat the objectives of an
article in which she sees none. Her comment does,
however, give me an occasion to state once more in
print that in the study of Arabic as of any other language, claims will not do. Careful ethnography is necessary and irreplaceable.
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The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital: Language, State, and Class in Egypt

Author(s): Niloofar Haeri

Current Anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

The relationships between the state, the dominant classes, and

1. The research reported on in this article was funded by a number

The resignation of Egypts official arts censor in the

796 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

bedded in histories and ideologies that may challenge

the Quran. As in the rest of the Arab world, everyone

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 797

the contrary, Egyptian Arabic is the oral medium of

are entirely lacking in Egyptian Arabic, and since they

798 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

emergence of newspapers in the mid-1800s, adaptations

their level of education or social class (Schmidt 1974;

Linguistic Market, Labor Market, and Class

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 799

styles and upper-class patterns of speech as an accident.

came to know many kinds of speakers, from those who

19. The educational background of the upper and upper middle

800 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

He goes on to say that the value or the price of linguistic

teach and those whose jobs involve reading and writing

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 801

market can be made the object of a negotiation and

The State and the Reproduction

omy, in which fusha lacks currency and which brings

802 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

ity of al-lugha al-arabiyya from religion through their

Transgressions of an Official Language?

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 803

whose appropriateness is rather difficult to determine.

ing with a picture of Madonna (the singer) on its cover

804 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

31. It should be briefly noted that Hosni Mubarak, the president of

broadcasters and those hosting a few specific programs,

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 805

reproduces different values for the official language.

806 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

even the so-called dominant language hierarchies can

nouncements by Bourdieu, Haeri misses the potential

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 807

here. What about a different scenariothat the state

examining the role of the state in symbolic reproduction.

808 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

and geography in Arabic; scientific subjects are taught

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 809

esting questions about the language-power relationship.

810 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

notes several of them. Ethnography and comparative

this claim goes too far. Achard (1980:17576) calls

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 811

those from Al-Azhar, this indicates quite clearly that

his theoretical concerns, in particular with regard to the

812 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

that the state has tried to channel religious education.

different groups of Egyptians, their lifelong and complex

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 813

question of the value of knowledge of a mostly spoken

tioned by Blommaert, whose history and ideology is not

814 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997

different from fushas becoming the language of the

a b u - a b s i, s a m i r. 1990. A characterization of the language of

h a e r i The Reproduction of Symbolic Capital 815