Niloofar Haeri, Sacred language, ordinary people:
Dilemmas of culture and politics in Egypt. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003. xvi, 184. Hb $59.95.
Sacred language, ordinary people is an excellent linguistic
ethnography of Arabic diglossia in “an attempt at understanding the
cultural and political implications of the divide between Classical Arabic
and Egyptian Arabic” (p. xi). The passionate debate about Classical
Arabic (the language of the Qur'an) as a facilitator of or a barrier
to modernization and change is handled intelligently, though
provocatively.