Written and spoken register differences in Baghdadi colloquial Arabic dramatic discourse

The purpose of this study is to describe linguistic differences between written scripts and the oral performances of those scripts in Baghdadi Colloquial Arabic dramatic discourse. The data involves 10 Biblical narratives written in a dramatized format with the intent of being performed. The scriptwriters’ goal was to create texts that were as similar to natural speech as possible. However, in spite of this goal, certain changes occurred throughout the stories when performed by mother tongue Baghdadi Arabic speakers. Although this study records all deletions, additions and substitutions in each of the ten stories, it will highlight three types of changes: the deletion of the connective wa ‘and’, the addition of repeated words and phrases, and diglossically motivated substitutions. These changes represent involvement strategies employed by the actors to accommodate the increased need for textual and interpersonal cohesion in the speaker-hearer dimension when changing the mode from writing to speaking.