Language Socialisation into Arabic Scholarly Discourse: A Longitudinal Ethnographic Study of Advanced Students at a Kano Madrasa

Language socialisation theory offers a powerful framework for understanding how individuals acquire not merely linguistic forms but the social values, ideological orientations, and communicative identities associated with expert participation in specialised discursive communities, and the madrasa represents one of the world's most distinctive language socialisation environments for Arabic scholarly competence. This study investigates the processes of language socialisation into Arabic scholarly discourse through a longitudinal ethnographic study of advanced students at a prestigious Kano madrasa, examining how learners are apprenticed into Classical Arabic scholarly reading, argumentation, and textual production over a three-year period. Using an ethnographic methodology combining participant observation of over 600 instructional and social hours, weekly audio-recorded interaction samples, quarterly text production analyses, and regular in-depth interviews with ten focal participants and five senior scholars, the research generates a rich longitudinal record of Arabic scholarly socialisation trajectories. Language socialisation analysis examines the scaffolding activities, correctional practices, textual mediation strategies, and identity alignment processes through which master scholars induct advanced students into Classical Arabic scholarly discourse. The study develops a theoretical model of madrasa-based Arabic language socialisation that extends and critiques existing language socialisation theory through engagement with the Islamic epistemic tradition's distinctive frameworks of knowledge transmission and scholarly identity. Keywords: Language socialisation, Arabic scholarly discourse, madrasa, ethnography, Kano.