Read on Twitter
This inspired me to write a quick thread on what Atiqa Hachimi calls ‘the Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology’ aka how not all Arabic dialects are seen equal and especially how Mashreqi dialects are generally seen as superior in the Arab world. 
https://twitter.com/imleslahdin/status/1357098434575036416
https://twitter.com/imleslahdin/status/1357098434575036416
This is interesting because sociolinguistic studies on Arabic tend to focus more on: Diglossia w/ Standard Arabic or on attitudes/perception of features within the same dialects, e.g., the Jordanian ʾ/g (<q) well explained here 2/ https://twitter.com/samijiries/status/1344408345805991937?s=20
Hachimi explores the language attitudes of ppl from all over the Arab world participating in reality TV, and shows systematically that Maghrebi dialects are seen as inferior and mocked while Mashreqi ones are perceived as superior and praised. 3/
This perception is old given the spread of Arabic from East to West, and was reinforced throughout the centuries and more recently with the Arab East being the main hub for Arabic media production (esp. Egyptian movies, Lebanese songs, etc.) 4/
The Arab media landscape is mostly dominated by the Levant, Egypt & the Gulf, while Maghrebi cultural production is not as popular (it’s popular locally but not in the rest of the Arab world). So, Maghrebis are more exposed to Eastern varieties than Mashreqis are to NA Arabic 5/
So Hachimi looked at interactions btw North African and Middle Eastern participants in reality TV, and saw that NA speakers bore the ‘communicative burden’ meaning they kept accommodating (changing words, speaking in Levantine/Egyptian accents...) bc they weren’t understood.. 6/
even when they tried their best to replace certain words with their fusḥa/Lebanese/Egyptian counterparts. The Egyptian and Lebanese participants on the other hand did not feel the need to change their way of speaking and even mocked the Maghrebi speakers regularly 7/
Example: 2 Mashreqis imitated a Moroccan speaker by pronouncing strings of consonants that had no meaning, so as to mock Moroccan diction. However, when a Tunisian imitated a Lebanese person, there was no mockery, but rather the goal was doing a perfect rendition of the accent 8/
There’s also the idea that some varieties of Arabic are more intelligible than others: Mashreqis deem Maghrebi hard to understand, but not vice versa. This all ties to “the question of who is an authentic Arabic speaker” & the perception that some dialects are closer to fusḥa 9/
This thread is basically a summary of Atiqa Hachimi's paper ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/josl.12037), direct quotations were her words. If you made it this far, please enjoy El Madame (Wajiha Jandoubi) imitating the Lebanese imāla pattern 
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