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1. Definition Language is a communication tool and a cultural vehicle, which implies that it is also a reference for identifying ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’, a content of loyalty and hostility, of social and cultural status. For nationalists, language is a tool that connects past and future, projecting a reconstructed centripetal unity out of the centrifugal reality of the present. Language is, therefore, one of the most visible symbols in the nationalistic museum, a symbol with a powerful legitimizing role (Fishman 1972). The etymology of the word ʿArab is still uncertain. It was c…