Aims and objectives: This study examines language accommodation in cross-dialectal encounters. It demonstrates how speakers of different Arabic varieties use (non)accommodation strategies that include both verbal and embodied actions. Approach: The study uses qualitative data from Arabic cross-dialectal communication. In the course of their interactions, participants draw on linguistic and nonlinguistic resources to achieve either convergent or divergent accommodation. Using the theoretical frameworks of discourse analysis (DA) and communication accommodation theory (CAT), the study investigates natural conversations for insight into qualities of Arabic cross-dialectal communication. Data and analysis: The data were collected in the United States. In this study, the participants originate from four major geographical areas in the Arab world, including the Maghreb, Egypt and Sudan, the Levant, and the Gulf. Findings/conclusions: The analysis demonstrates that successful accommodation requires a verbal and nonverbal collaborative construction of meaning to achieve co-participation. Participants linguistically converge while they display a shared Arab identity. The data also show that when a sense of shared Arabness is deemphasized and the positive social image to a group’s variety is violated, divergence as a nonaccommodative strategy is used. Originality: This is the first study that demonstrates how different modes of accommodation are expressed, not only through speech but also through embodied actions. The study shows that accommodation as a process is not complete at the verbal level; it must be orchestrated at multiple semiotic levels, including nonverbal ones. Significance/implications: Scholars have paid less attention to nonverbal accommodation. This study seeks to bridge this gap by analyzing both verbal and nonverbal accommodation, whether convergent or divergent, in Arabic cross-dialectal communication. It shows how speakers of different dialects use accommodation to signal intergroup relations and negotiate different social identities.

This research discusses language ideologies in Amazigh/Berber in Morocco. It analyzes Amazigh activists' views on the process of Amazigh standardization, including dialect unification, script selection and reclaiming of Amazigh identity. Drawing on findings in the study of language ideologies and discourse analysis, this paper examines interviews with activists and demonstrates a connectedness between participants' conceptions about language and their embodied actions. It also reveals ideological assemblages, in which conflicting language beliefs and practices are bound together. Through examination of the ideological divide on Amazigh language and script, the study shows how verbal and nonverbal actions iconically index aspects of Amazigh language ideologies, including linguistic purism, manifested through intricate forms of recontextualized lexical items, embodied gestures and voice features. The participants' linguistic and non-linguistic practices provide insight into particular identity dimensions and complex social relations. The indexicalities of their utterances, which will be analyzed discursively, are better understood not only through consideration of the various semiotic resources such as embodiment, but also through discussion of specific histories of political and linguistic conflicts. The study as a whole relies on an interdisciplinary method to emphasize the political nature of language standardization and demonstrate the significant role of embodiment in language ideological research.

This study uses discourse analysis to investigate the connectedness between embodiment and the politics of orthography. Drawing on a video-recorded conversation from a large sociolinguistic dataset on Amazigh/Berber, the study examines the role of embodied acts not only as semiotic resources that elaborate talk but also as consequential discursive entities that organize political arguments about script. The participants use multimodal utterances that extend beyond meaning to iconize social orientation as well as power in conversation. Analysis of the video reveals the way participants map their social perceptions of the language and its script onto their talk and embodied actions. Analysis also shows how script arguments mirror larger political debates in Morocco, in which script preferences are based on ideological and political orientations.

Script reforms are socially motivated actions undertaken by institutions or communities that intentionally select, modify, or standardize writing systems. Although scripts are often analyzed as technical ways of writing, designed to enhance literacy and facilitate communication, this is not how script users typically perceive them. Beyond their linguistic function, scripts acquire deep social significance through their critically intertwined relations with issues of identity, political ideologies, and linguistic differentiation. This study analyzes such ideological underpinnings within script use and discusses the social ramifications of language codification. The study draws on different orthographic debates from Africa, Asia, and beyond, to demonstrate the social nature of script. The outcome of this study has implications for communities confronting orthographic decisions and competing script choices.