Always the Villain: The Wife in Emirati Folktales. A Socio-cultural and Linguistic Reading

Folklore plays a crucial role in the preservation of the local heritage, and it can provide valuable information regarding cultural and religious norms, language, and environment of that people. The folktale is one of the many forms of folklore and it represents the product of the individual traditional heritage that originates from a population’s collective cultural imagination and background. In the Arabian Gulf societies, the oral tradition of storytelling has been prominent for a very long time and it has somehow been preserved until fairly recent times. The folktale belongs to the Emirati intangible cultural heritage, and it constitutes a deeply rooted element related to Bedouin tribal clans and to the desertic and maritime environments which characterised the territory. The United Arab Emirates is very attentive to the conservation of their heritage, both at national and international levels. This study provides a socio-cultural and linguistic analysis of the Emirati folktale, based on a sample of three stories from Al-Ain, written in Emirati Arabic, which share a common feature: the wickedness of wives.