Common Egyptian Proverbs versus Women Socio-cultural Identity, in the Shadow of Dominance Theory: A Case Study of Ahmad Shaolan's Book

Language, woman and the influence of culture and society in creating language differences between men and women is a topic that has occupied the minds of many researchers for many years. Dominance theory is one of the most important theories that examines the difference in social status between men and women and how it reflects on each one specific linguistic behavior. Proverbs are considered the most important linguistic elements explain the lives of people in the society, so that they can be used to study the language of a woman and understand her cultural and social identity. The first volume of the book mosuʽa al-amsāl al-shaʽbyya al-misryya va al-taʽbirāt al-sāʼira (Encyclopedia of Egyptian Popular Proverbs and Common Expressions) by Ibrahim Ahmed Shaolan contains a large number of local Egyptian proverbs that shows women interpretations in a special way. Considering the importance of accent in cultural linguistic studies, we noticed that there have been very few studies about the quality of socio-cultural identity of women in common proverbs among Arabic dialects. Therefore, relying on the descriptive-analytical method and in conformity with the statistical model, we examined local women's proverbs based on the mentioned book and in the light of the dominance theory. The results that we have achieved in this study are as follows: the percentage of negative characteristics of a woman prevails over her positive characteristics. The linguistic behavior of a woman is such that when expressing her opinions and ideas, she usually chooses the nominal and declarative sentence style, in the position of competition and struggle, he chooses the style of repeated first person pronoun and in the time of despair and failure, she often turns to choosing the style of non-declarative sentence.