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Giles, H., & Powesland, P. F. (1975). Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London: Academic Press.

According to Accommodation Theory (Giles et al., 1975) and Audience Design (Bell, 2001), speakers adjust linguistic features in view of how they will be perceived by their interlocutors. In the Arabic Speaking World, Egyptian Arabic is wide-spread in the media. This unique situation presents an opportunity to observe whether Egyptian newscasters accommodate their speech based on the identity of their audience on a local (Egyptian) versus an international (pan-Arab) level as a reflection of the linguistic standard in media production. The current study aims to observe stylistic variation among Egyptian newscasters by examining how they pronounce /dʒ/ (orthographically represented as <ج>), where [dʒ] is the Modern Standard variety and [g] is attributed as the local Egyptian one. This sociolinguistic factor will be referred to as (JIIM). To conduct the study, 38 10-minute video clips of 38 individual Egyptian newscasters were extracted from YouTube. These YouTube videos were categorized by audience type, where 19 newscasters were broadcasting to a local Egyptian audience, and 19 others were broadcasting to an international pan-Arab audience. The criteria for selecting broadcasters considered that they have broadcasted within the past 10 years to look for more recent trends of language use. All newscasters are also primarily from city centers (i.e. Cairo and Alexandria) or have worked there for a majority of their lives. The number of instances of [dʒ] versus [g] within each video were counted, and the data was coded auditorily by the researcher. Since the data entailed the probability of frequency counts, it was analyzed using a two-way chi-square test. With this test, the study seeks to determine whether there is a systematic relationship between the intended audience (local Egyptian or international pan-Arab) and (JIIM). The results found a systematic relationship between different audience types and proportion of [dʒ] versus [g] (p = 0.00026). The findings imply that Egyptian newscasters do accommodate according to audience type as anticipated according to Accommodation Theory and Speaker Design. This suggests that Egyptian newscasters tend to index their Egyptian identity to a local audience through the local variety using [g], and their Arabic-speaking identity to their audiences through the standard [dʒ] despite Egypt being a major producer of Arabic media and contributes to setting the standards of media production. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of Accommodation Theory and Audience Design, specifically within the context of media production and standards in the Arabic Speaking World. Future research may delve further into the relationship between Egyptian Arabic, media, and national identity through a comparative study between the speech of Egyptian newscasters and newscasters from another Arabic-speaking country as well as making observations for more stylistic and social factors, such as news topic, gender, and age.