Media Speaking Arabic(s):
A New (G)local Digital Heritage
Rosa Pennisi
Season 1 – Which Arabic(s) in Digital Media?
Episode 2 title: When Writing Takes Voice (Writing speech, speaking writing)
English script
In the language of digital media, writing and speech no longer appear as two neatly separate spheres. In this episode, we try to understand what happens when writing begins to sound like a voice, and when voice—especially in podcasts and digital content—is shaped with an increasingly strong awareness of writing.
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Welcome to Media Speaking Arabic(s): a new (g)local digital heritage, the podcast of the SABIRANET project.
SABIRANET is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU through Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan, Young Researcher 2024 – SoE line, administered by the Italian Ministry of University and Research.
In this podcast, we explore the relationship between Arabic language, digital media, mobility, and society across Morocco and Europe.
I am Rosa Pennisi, researcher in Arabic Language and Literature, and you are listening to the second episode of the first season.
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In the previous episode, we asked what happens when media speak mixed Arabic.
Today I would like to begin with another observation, one that often returns in my work.
When one works on digital texts, especially in the classroom or in research, something interesting sometimes happens: one reads materials that look written, but in fact sound almost as if they were speaking. And, conversely, one listens to content that seems spontaneous, yet is actually shaped with a care and a form that are very close to writing.
Sometimes very little is enough to notice it.
A newspaper headline that sounds like a direct question.
An article that, while remaining written, adopts a tone closer to conversation.
A podcast that sounds natural and immediate, but is in fact carefully organized, paced, and calibrated.
In short: writing does not always sound fully “written,” and speech is not always truly spontaneous.
This is precisely where the digital becomes interesting.
Because digital media do not only transform the way content circulates.
They also transform the way writing and speech meet, approach one another, imitate one another, and overlap.
This second episode begins from here.
From a question that, once again, is not only linguistic, but also social and media-related:
what happens when writing takes voice, and when voice is constructed like writing?
Why does this matter? It matters for at least three reasons.
It matters because the way something is said or written is never neutral.
It matters because the boundary between orality and writing helps produce effects of proximity, involvement, credibility, and discursive authority.
And it matters because, in contemporary Arabic—and especially in Moroccan and diasporic contexts—this intertwining makes the relations between Standard Arabic, Dārija, and mixed forms even more visible.
In this episode, then, we will try to understand precisely this: how the digital blurs the boundaries between writing and speech, and why this helps us read media language more effectively.
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When we speak of writing and speech, we are often led to imagine them as two opposite poles.
On the one hand, writing: more stable, more controlled, more distant.
On the other, voice: more immediate, more situated, closer to interaction.
This distinction, of course, still makes sense. But in digital media it is often no longer sufficient.
Today we can find written texts that incorporate signals typical of orality: direct questions, deictics, colloquial formulas, syntactic rhythms closer to conversation, and register choices that reduce the distance from the audience.
And, conversely, we can find oral texts—podcasts, video commentaries, live streams, audio content—that sound spontaneous, but are in fact organized through a highly controlled structure: introduction, relaunches, explanations, lexical repetitions, and carefully constructed effects of proximity.
In other words, the point is no longer simply to distinguish what is written from what is spoken. The point is to observe how writing can produce voice effects, and how voice can take on forms closer to public writing.
This is particularly important in the case of contemporary Arabic. Here the relationship between orality and writing intersects with other issues: the role and functions of Standard Arabic, the weight of colloquial varieties, the growing visibility of Dārija, the stratification of repertoires, and the social perception of what appears more authoritative, more proximate, more spontaneous, or more correct.[1]
In digital media, all of this does not remain in the background. It can be heard. It can be seen. And it often becomes an essential part of meaning.
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Let us begin with a concrete case in which writing moves closer to voice.
To address this properly, it is better to start from a specific example.
For this purpose, I choose an article published by Goud, a Moroccan digital newspaper founded in 2011 by Ahmed Najim and known for its highly visible use of Dārija within online journalistic discourse.
For further information on Goud and to consult the article analysed here, you can refer to the notes and bibliographical references attached to this episode.[2]
The article, published on 3 March 2023, is signed by Karim Soufi and bears the title:
رئيس ايطاليا وشح تلميذة مغربية بوسام الاستحقاق الجمهوري
(raʾīs Īṭāliyā waššaḥa tilmīdha maġribiyya bi-wisām al-istiḥqāq al-jumhūrī)
that is:
‘The President of Italy awarded a Moroccan student the Order of Merit of the Republic.’
The topic of the article is, in itself, straightforward: it reports the recognition granted in Italy to a young Moroccan woman engaged in voluntary work and in helping children and women in vulnerable situations.
What is interesting, however, is the way the text is constructed.
If we read the beginning of the article, we find writing that remains relatively close to the informative function typical of a written news article.
It begins, in fact, by referring to a source:
“قالت جريدة “lanazione” الإيطالية”
that is, “the Italian newspaper La Nazione wrote”
and immediately afterwards presents the news item:
“أن رئيس الطاليان”
“that the President of Italy”
“سيرجيو ماتاريلا، وشح تلميذة مغربية”
“honoured a Moroccan student”
“بوسام الاستحقاق الجمهوري من درجة فارس”
“with the Order of Merit of the Republic, in the rank of Knight,”
“بسبب التزامها بخدمة الأطفال ومساعدة العيالات اللي عايشين فحالة تشرد.”
“because of her commitment to serving children and helping women living in a condition of vagrancy,” that is, women without a fixed home.
In this whole first part of the article, the syntactic structure coincides with the classic construction used in journalistic Media Arabic: verb, subject, and complements.
Within these constructions, however, mixed expressions do appear.
One example is “رئيس الطاليان”, where رئيس is bivalent—that is, the same term is shared by both Standard Arabic and Dārija, with the meaning “head” or “president”—while الطاليان, “Italy/Italian,” clearly belongs to the Moroccan Dārija repertoire.
Another example is the relative phrase “العيالات اللي عايشين فحالة تشرد”, “women who are living”, where a classic relative-clause function is realized through lexical and morphosyntactic elements drawn from Dārija.
It is also worth recalling that Moroccan Dārija does not have a fully shared standard codification for written use. This is precisely why its visibility within a written space such as a journalistic article is so significant.[3]
But then, in the last sentence of the article, something different happens.
The passage reads:
“هاذ الشابة المغربية”
“this young Moroccan woman”
“جات للطاليان مع الام ديالها”
“came to Italy with her mother”
“وهي عندها عامين”
“when she was two years old”
“وعزيز عليها”
“and it is important for her”
“تمنح الحب للوليدات الصغار”
“to give affection to little children”
“كما تلقات الحب من الام ديالها فصغرها”
“just as she received love from her mother in her childhood”
“وعمرها غادي تبخل عليهم”
“and she will never fail them”
“بوقتها وجهدها”
“with her time and effort”
This may be described as the most “spoken-like” point of the text.
And the reason is not simply that entire expressions in Dārija appear.
The more interesting point is another one: in this passage, journalistic writing, while remaining writing, begins to organize information as a telling voice would do.
We can see this in several details.
The first is proximal deixis: هاذ الشابة المغربية, “this young Moroccan woman”.[4]
Here the referent is not introduced through a more distant or neutral designation.
The proximal demonstrative brings her closer to the scene of enunciation.
In other words, the text reduces distance and constructs an effect of greater discursive proximity, often associated with oral interaction.
The second element concerns the syntactic-discursive organization of the passage.
Here information is no longer integrated and compressed, as often happens in more strictly informative and carefully controlled written registers, but unfolds through fragmentation and successive additions[5]:
the text says that she arrives in Italy with her mother, that she was two years old, that she likes to give affection to children, that she received love from her mother, and that she will never fail to give children her time and energy.
This incremental construction does not automatically turn the text into speech, but it does evoke discursive strategies often associated with oral storytelling and, more broadly, with a stronger dynamic of involvement.
There is then a third, very important aspect: affective predication.[6]
When the text says تمنح الحب وعزيز عليها—“it is important for her to give affection”—it is not merely informing us about an action.
It is not simply telling us that the protagonist engages in voluntary work. It stages an affective disposition, an emotional stance, a way of being.
To explain this point properly, we may use a notion proposed by scholars such as Douglas Biber: stance.[7]
By this term, we mean, in very simplified form, the way in which a text makes visible attitudes, judgments, involvement, and evaluation.
So, here, the text does not only give us a fact: it also shows us the protagonist’s affective orientation toward what she does. And this matters, because it already takes us somewhat beyond a purely informative logic.
But we must be precise: this alone is not yet enough to say that we are dealing with an effect of orality.
Affectivity and evaluation do not belong only to speech: they can also exist in writing, including in journalistic texts.
What we can say, then, is that here a form of discursive subjectivity appears, and that this subjectivity prepares the ground for a more involved mode of discourse.
And then, lexicon also matters.
The Dārija expression “للوليدات الصغار”, ‘to the little children’—used only in the article’s final sentence—does not correspond to the standard term “الأطفال” ‘children’, used elsewhere in the article. The former has a more relational, more ordinary, less institutional colouring. It produces an effect of greater immediacy and lesser distance.
Here too, however, the analysis must be formulated carefully: it is not the case that an ordinary word is automatically “oral”.
The point is another one.
This lexical choice makes the text less impersonal and closer to a lexicon of relation, care, and proximity. In this way, together with the other elements in the article’s final sentence, it helps construct a more involved voice.
Finally, there is the ending of the sentence: “وعمرها غادي تبخل عليهم”—’and she will never fail them’—”بوقتها وجهدها” ‘with her time and effort’.
This is, above all, where the passage becomes particularly interesting.
Not because the sentence is fully “oral” in itself. It is not.
But because several elements accumulate here at once: an idiomatic formulation, strong evaluation, a highly perceptible subjective voice, and a closure that seems designed not only to inform, but also to express participation.[8]
In other words, the degree of discursive involvement increases here.
And it is precisely this increase in involvement that can produce, within writing, a local effect of oralization.
This point is important from a theoretical perspective as well.
Scholars such as Wallace Chafe and Deborah Tannen have long shown that speech and writing should not be thought of as two separate and opposite blocks, but rather as two poles of a continuum.[9]
In between, there are many hybrid texts. And some written texts can adopt strategies which, while remaining written, evoke speech through their degree of involvement, voice presence, and closeness to ordinary interaction.
And this is exactly why the case is useful for us.
Not because it shows us a text that is fully “oral”. It does not.
On the contrary, this article is interesting precisely because it remains hybrid.
Its opening preserves a recognizable journalistic frame; other segments remain closer to an informative function; but in certain points—and especially in this final sentence—the writing mobilizes discursive resources often associated with involved speech.
So we would not say:
“this text is oral because it is in Dārija”.
We would rather say that, in this passage, journalistic writing does not transcribe speech, but mimics some of its discursive effects.
It does so through proximal deixis, incremental syntax, affective-relational lexicon, and idiomatic formulations that construct a less impersonal voice, closer to ordinary interaction.
And this also changes the type of discursive relationship proposed to the reader.
The text does not abandon its informative function, but combines it here with a more narrative and more involved mode, one that reduces enunciative distance and constructs an effect of greater discursive proximity.
It is precisely in this sense that, in the digital media observed in SABIRANET, writing can begin to sound like a voice.
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If in the previous section we saw that writing can move closer to voice, here it is worth looking at the reverse process.
Because in digital media the opposite also happens: sometimes voice, precisely because we hear it, automatically appears to us more spontaneous, more natural, more authentic.
But this is not always the case.
A voice can sound immediate and, at the same time, be highly constructed.
It can sound simple, yet have been prepared with great precision.
It can sound close, but that closeness may be the result of highly controlled choices: choices of rhythm, lexicon, syntax, and register.
In this sense, voice is never only “voice”: it is also a shaping of discourse.
To make this point more concrete, I use here a particularly useful case drawn from Hawamich, an independent Moroccan media platform which presents itself as a journalistic space grounded in proximity, investigation, and attention to geographical, cultural, and social margins.
The case that interests us is an article published on hawamich.info on 12 October 2021, under the title:
“إمديازن” أيام زمان والصحافة الآن.. هل أخذت الصحافة مكان شعراء التكسب؟
You will find the link and references in the notes to this episode.[10]
The general theme of the article is very clear: it compares the imdiyazen, that is, itinerant Amazigh poet-singers, with the role of the contemporary press, asking whether journalism has in part taken the place of those mediators of public speech who once praised, denounced, narrated events, and commented on social life.
Alongside this written version, one can also listen, on the same page, to the podcast version of the article.
This example is especially interesting because it does not present us with spontaneous speech in the strict sense.
We are not dealing with an improvised conversation.
We are not dealing with an audio recording made “however it came out”.
We are dealing with something else: a voice that follows a pre-existing written text, but partially reworks it as it is put into sound.
I described this type of production in a previous study as premeditated speech: a prepared mode of speech that follows the written text closely, yet can modify some lexical and morphosyntactic choices precisely in order to function better in oral form.[11]
This distinction also helps explain why, unlike unplanned speech, these podcasts do not display the most typical signs of immediate spontaneity—for example interjections or disorderly restarts—and are therefore a particularly useful case for understanding what a constructed orality can look like.
Let us take a first, very simple example.
In the written version, we read, in essence:
“كان نظم الشعر هو مهنتهم التي يكسبون بها ثمنا قليلا.”
that is: “Composing poetry was their profession, from which they earned a modest income.”
In the podcast version, however, the same passage sounds like this:
kān naḏ̣am š-š-iʿr huwa l-mihna dyāl-hum llī ka-yksbū bi-hā ṯaman qalīl
The content, in fact, remains almost the same: it still says that composing poetry was their trade, and that this trade brought them little money.
But the way of saying it changes.
In the voice, elements from the Dārija repertoire appear, such as dyāl-hum (possessive adjective, “their”), lli (relative pronoun, “that/which”), and ka-yksbū (present-tense verbal morphology in Dārija).
In other words, a formulation fully compatible with written Standard Arabic is recalibrated toward forms that are far more normal in Moroccan oral usage.
And here the decisive point is: it does not look like a random substitution at all.
It looks, rather, like a regular, oriented, controlled substitution.
The voice does not move freely away from the text: it follows it, but makes it more sayable and more listenable. So, we are not dealing with a voice that simply “speaks however it comes”. No.
We are dealing with a voice that adapts the written text with precision to another channel—the sonic one. And this is already a first, very strong sign that the naturalness of the audio is, at least in part, constructed.
Let us take a second example. In the written version, we find a sentence such as:
“ومن لم يمنحهم يهجونه وينشرون أسراره أمام الناس”
that is: “Whoever did not reward them, they attacked and exposed his secrets before the people”.
In the podcast version, by contrast, we hear:
w-llī mā ʿaṭā-hum-š yahaǧūna-hu wa-yanšurūna ʾasrāra-hu qdām n-nāss
Here too the general meaning remains stable: whoever did not give something to the itinerant poets was attacked and publicly exposed.
But from the formal point of view, the oral version once again reproduces the same passage from the written article by using morphosyntactic elements from the Dārija repertoire—for example the discontinuous verbal negation with ma + verb + sh, and also lexical choices common in Dārija such as qdam n-nas (‘in front of the people’), in place of the more strictly standard formulation used in the written article.
These shifts do not change the underlying content, but they do change the discursive profile of the sentence: they make it closer to a formal style of Moroccan Arabic.
And once again, what strikes us is not pure spontaneity, but rather its opposite:
the regularity of the transformation.
The voice follows a written journalistic text, but at clearly recognizable points it moves that text toward a form more compatible with speech.
We might put it even more simply like this:
Here the voice does not improvise; it interprets.
It does not invent freely; it transposes.
It does not abandon the text; it rearranges it.
And this is fundamental for the argument of this episode.
Because it helps us correct a widespread assumption: the idea that voice is always the place of pure spontaneity. No.
In digital media, voice can be prepared, edited, calibrated, written before being spoken, or it can closely follow a written text and modify it selectively.
That is why it is not enough to say: “here there is a voice, therefore there is immediate authenticity”.
We need to ask instead: how has that voice been constructed? through which choices? and with what effects?
The Hawamich case is useful for exactly this reason.
On the one hand, it maintains a strong journalistic structure: there is a written article, informative and organized, with a precise theme.
On the other hand, the podcast version shows that the passage into voice is not mechanical.
It is not the simple flat reading of a standard text.
It is a worked-out voicing, in which some structures are shifted toward forms more accessible to listening and closer to mixed Moroccan usage.
In other words: voice constructs its effects of naturalness with great precision.
And for precisely that reason, it is as interesting an object of analysis as writing itself.
In the previous section, we saw that a written text can adopt traits that make it sound a little like a voice. Here, by contrast, we see the opposite: a voice can be much less spontaneous than it seems, because it emerges from a precise discursive design. In the digital media observed in SABIRANET, then, neither writing is always “only writing”, nor voice always “only spontaneity”. Both can be recalibrated according to medium, audience, and the kind of presence the text seeks to construct.
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At this point, the underlying issue becomes clearer.
In digital media, writing and speech do not function as two closed categories, but as two resources that can be realigned in different ways.
In the case of Goud, we have seen a journalistic written text which, in one precise passage, locally evokes speech-like discourse.
In the case of Hawamich, we have seen instead a voice that does not coincide with immediate spontaneity, but with the selective and controlled voicing of a pre-existing written text.
This means that, when we analyse a digital text, it is no longer enough to say: “this is written” or “this is spoken.”
We need to ask instead: in what way does writing construct voice effects? And in what way does voice reorganize materials and structures of writing?
This is where the theme once again intersects directly with the heart of SABIRANET. Because in the case of Arabic—and especially in the relation between Standard Arabic, Dārija, and mixed forms—the boundary between writing and orality is not just a technical matter. It concerns prestige, proximity, authority, and the social recognizability of linguistic forms.
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Why does all this matter so much?
Because the relationship between writing and voice is never purely formal. It produces very concrete discursive and social effects.
When a written text incorporates traits of orality, it can construct an effect of greater proximity, accessibility, and involvement.
When, by contrast, a voice is shaped in a more controlled, more explanatory, and more orderly way, it can construct an effect of greater credibility, stability, and discursive authority.
Naturally, these effects are not automatic.
They depend on the medium, the context, the audience, and also on the linguistic ideologies of those who read or listen.
For some, a language closer to orality may appear lively, recognizable, and more immediate.
For others, it may seem less correct or less authoritative.
Likewise, a more constructed voice may appear reliable and legitimate—or, on the contrary, too distant.
And this is precisely why the relationship between writing and voice is so important to observe: it tells us not only what a text looks like, but also what kind of discursive relation it makes possible.
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There is one final important aspect.
In digital media, writing and speech do not simply coexist: they often pass continuously into one another.
An article can be read aloud in a podcast.
A podcast can be transcribed, quoted, and recirculated.
A written post can adopt the tone of oral interaction.
A phrase spoken in a video can become a comment, a caption, a screenshot, a meme.
In this sense, the digital is not only the place where writing and speech meet.
It is also the place where they are constantly recalibrated and set into circulation again.
And it is precisely this mobility that makes the boundary less stable: not because it disappears altogether, but because it is continuously redrawn.
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Let us return, then, to the opening question of this episode: what happens when writing takes voice, and when voice is constructed like writing?
First of all, the boundary between writing and speech stops appearing as a rigid division.
It does not disappear, but it changes.
And this transformation forces us to look at media language in a less schematic way.
In the case of the Goud article, we have seen that a journalistic written text can remain such and yet, in certain passages, organize information as a telling voice would do.
Not because it becomes speech in the full sense, but because it mobilizes discursive effects of proximity, involvement, and enunciative presence.
In the case of Hawamich, we have seen the reverse process: a voice that may seem immediate and natural, but that actually arises from a precise working-over of written text.
Here voice does not coincide with pure spontaneity: it is a selective, oriented, constructed voicing.
This means that, in digital media, neither writing is always only writing, nor voice always only spontaneity.
Both can be recalibrated, adapted, and transformed according to the medium, the audience, and the discursive effects one seeks to construct.
In the case of contemporary Arabic, all this is particularly visible.
Because the relationship between writing and voice is intertwined with the presence of Standard Arabic, with the growing visibility of Dārija, with the mixed forms of media communication, and with the ways speakers attribute value, prestige, or proximity to different linguistic resources.
In this second episode, then, we have taken a step further beyond the first.
If in the first episode we asked what happens when media speak mixed Arabic, today we have tried to understand how the digital rewrites the relationship between writing and orality, and how this relationship can be observed concretely in texts.
In the next episode, we will widen the lens to another fundamental dimension: the movement of language between Morocco and Europe.
We will see how the Arabic of digital media travels, transforms itself, and builds connections in diasporic contexts.
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You have been listening to Media Speaking Arabic(s), the podcast of the SABIRANET project.
In the description you will find the link to the project website, where you can listen to and read all episodes, transcribed and enriched with explanatory notes and bibliographical references.
I am Rosa Pennisi, and thank you for listening.
See you in the next episode.
NOTES
[1] Arabic sociolinguistic background.
This episode builds on a well-established sociolinguistic understanding of Arabic as a space of stratified and functionally differentiated repertoires rather than a simple opposition between “standard” and “dialect.” Classical discussions begin with Ferguson’s model of diglossia and Badawi’s proposal of multiple levels of contemporary Arabic; more recent work has emphasized the ideological dimension of these distinctions and the growing visibility of colloquial and mixed forms in writing. For Arabic in general, see Ferguson (1959, 1996), Badawi (1973), Bassiouney (2020), and Brustad (2017). For Morocco in particular, see Miller (2017), Caubet (2017), and Hachimi (2017).
[2] Goud and the article discussed in this episode.
For basic information on Goud as a Moroccan online outlet known for its extensive use of Dārija, see Pennisi (2025a). For the article analysed in this episode, see: https://www.goud.ma/رئيس-ايطاليا-وشح-تلميذة-مغربية-بوسام-ا-790593/ . The episode uses the article as a case study in how journalistic writing can combine an informative frame with locally speech-like features and discursive strategies.
[3] Moroccan Dārija in writing.
The statement that Moroccan Dārija lacks a fully shared written standard does not mean that it is not written. On the contrary, scholars have shown that Dārija has become increasingly visible in contemporary public writing—especially in blogs, social media, activist discourse, and popular media—while remaining orthographically and ideologically contested. See Caubet (2017), Miller (2017), and Pennisi (2020).
[4] Proximal deixis in Arabic.
A proximal demonstrative points to a referent as close to the speaker’s or enunciator’s sphere, but demonstrative choice is not determined by physical distance alone. Work on Arabic demonstratives has shown that their use is strongly context-dependent and may also reflect degrees of perceptual or discursive accessibility. In this passage, the proximal demonstrative does not merely identify the referent: it helps reduce enunciative distance and make the reference more immediate. See Jarbou (2010). For a broader discussion of demonstratives as deictic expressions linked to joint attention and discourse, see Diessel & Coventry (2020).
[5] Incremental syntax and discourse organization.
What is being described here as incremental organization refers to the step-by-step addition of information, rather than its compression into dense, highly integrated written structures. This kind of sequencing has often been associated with more involved, speech-like discourse. Classic discussions include Chafe & Tannen (1987) and Tannen (1982). For Arabic digital writing specifically, see Latif (2017), who discusses the “oralization of writing” in online discourse.
[6] Affective predication.
By affective predication I refer here to a predicative structure that attributes not only an action or state, but also an emotional or evaluative orientation to the participant. In the passage discussed in this episode, the text does not simply report volunteering as an activity; it frames the protagonist as someone affectively oriented toward care and affection. This overlaps with broader work on stance, evaluation, and discursive subjectivity. See Biber (2006) on stance in discourse, Bednarek (2006) on evaluation in media discourse, and Hachimi (2017) for a discussion of stance and ideological positioning in Moroccan digital discourse.
[7] Stance.
Douglas Biber uses the term “stance” to refer to the ways speakers and writers express attitudes, feelings, judgments, certainty, doubt, or evaluation in discourse. In this episode, the concept is used in a broad and simplified sense to show how a text can go beyond bare information and make an evaluative or affective orientation visible. See Biber (2006).
[8] Idiomatic closure, evaluation, subjective voice, and participation.
The final sequence “وعمرها غادي تبخل عليهم بوقتها وجهدها” is important not because a single morpheme makes it “oral”, but because the whole formulation concentrates several effects at once. It is idiomatic in the sense that it sounds like a committed, familiar way of saying “she will never fail them”; it is evaluative because it implicitly presents the protagonist’s conduct as morally positive; it is subjective because the wording makes the narrator’s orientation more perceptible; and it expresses participation because it sounds less like detached reporting and more like involved endorsement. On involvement and evaluation in discourse, see Chafe & Tannen (1987), Tannen (1982), and Biber (2006).
[9] Chafe, Tannen, and beyond a rigid opposition between speech and writing.
Wallace Chafe and Deborah Tannen are key references for moving beyond a rigid opposition between spoken and written discourse. Chafe shows that speech and writing often differ in recurrent tendencies—such as involvement versus integration, fragmentation versus condensation—but not as absolute or fixed categories. Tannen, in turn, emphasizes that “oral” and “literate” strategies can circulate across both spoken and written discourse: a written text may adopt strategies associated with speech, while spoken discourse may display highly literate organization. Their work has also been further qualified by later scholarship, which has stressed the importance of genre, medium, and communicative situation. For this reason, the point is not that speech and writing are impossible to compare, but that they should not be treated as two homogeneous and mutually exclusive blocks. See Chafe & Tannen (1987) and Tannen (1982). For a complementary model distinguishing material medium from communicative conception, see Koch and Oesterreicher (2012). In this episode, these works are used as a heuristic framework rather than as a model assumed to map directly onto the specific sociolinguistic realities of Arabic and Moroccan Dārija.
[10] Hawamich article.
For the Hawamich article discussed here, see: https://hawamich.info/2903/ . The interest of the case lies in the coexistence, on the same page, of a written article and its podcast version, which makes it possible to compare the written and voiced realizations of the same content.
[11] Premeditated speech and the Hawamich case.
The discussion in this episode refers directly to Pennisi’s comparative analysis of Moroccan digital media, which examines the relation between oral and written practices across online newspapers, talk-shows, and podcasts. In that study, the Hawamich podcasts are useful precisely because they do not represent unplanned spontaneous speech: they are cases of premeditated speech, that is, prepared oral productions that follow a pre-existing written text closely while selectively recalibrating it at the lexical and morphosyntactic levels in order to function more effectively in oral form. This makes them especially valuable for observing how “voice” in digital media may be constructed rather than simply improvised. See Pennisi (2025b).
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