El-Said Muhammad Badawi (Arabic: السعيد محمد بدوي, romanized: Al-Saʿīd Muḥammad Badawī; 1929 – March 16, 2014) was a scholar and linguist and author of many works, both in English and in Arabic, dealing with various aspects of the Arabic language.
[1] Having learned the Qur'an by the age of ten in his village, El-Nakhas, Sharqiyya Governorate, he attended Al-Azhar University for his secondary schooling.
in Arabic Language & Literature and Islamic Studies from Cairo University, an M.A.
[2] After obtaining his Ph.D. Badawi briefly taught linguistics at the University of Cairo, then began teaching Arabic literature and linguistics at Omdurman University in Sudan,[3] and moved to the American University in Cairo in 1969, where he became the Curriculum Advisor for the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in 1970.
In the field of sociolinguistics, perhaps Badawi's best known work is Mustawayāt al-ʻArabīyah al-muʻāṣirah fī Miṣr (Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt) wherein he challenges the traditional simplistic dichotomy of Classical and Colloquial Arabic, proposing instead a more subtle analysis involving several levels of usage.