Linguistic Self-Representation in a Popular Omani Cartoon: Towards the Rise of a National Standard?.

The aim of the present paper is to analyze certain phenomena of variation which occur in the language used by the characters of the popular Omani cartoon yōm u-yōm. This language is of particular interest since it represents one of the first attempts made by the official Omani media at linguistic self-representation. Until recently, the more prestigious variety commonly referred to as “Gulf Arabic” was often preferred to actual Omani Arabic in the context of the media. In order to assess the nature of this variation, the language of the main characters of the show has been analyzed: five different morphosyntactical features have been examined, namely: the third person masculine singular suffix pronoun, the relative pronoun, the interrogative pronoun, the characteristic endings of the second person feminine singular and of the second and third person masculine plural of the imperfect verb, and the negative particles. Our analysis shows that whenever variation occurs, it does so in the speech of the characters from the southern region of Dhofar or from the northern region of ad-Dakhiliya. The speech of the characters from the area of the Bāṭinah Coast appears more stable. Possible explanation for this phenomenon are discussed in the concluding paragraph.