The Contribution of French Orientalist Scholarship to the Rise of Vernacular Arabic as a Literary Language

This article explores how the approach of French orientalists to vernacular Arabic may have played a role in reshaping Arab intellectual attitudes toward ʿāmmiyya, ultimately contributing to its emergence as a written literary medium. After outlining the history of vernacular Arabic studies, the article presents selected case studies to illustrate how 19th- and early 20th-century French scholars—particularly Jean-Joseph Marcel and Guillaume-André Villoteau—treated the vernacular as a legitimate object of linguistic and literary inquiry. Their work, which included compiling dictionaries and printing colloquial texts with translations and grammatical notes, appears to have sparked interest among some Arab intellectuals, leading to renewed engagement with vernacular forms. This paper argues that such examples provide indications that the scholarly framing of vernacular Arabic by French orientalists is likely to have encouraged Arab thinkers to reassess its value in literature, particularly in theater and poetry. While not based on direct declarations by Arab authors themselves, the evidence suggests a significant shift catalyzed through intellectual contact. Rather than claiming a direct causal link, the article proposes a hypothesis: that French scholarly interest in the vernacular contributed to its evolving status, encouraging its gradual legitimation as a literary and expressive language in its own right. Keywords: Vernacular Arabic, contact linguistics, French orientalism