Global English And Arabic

This volume contains selected chapters from researchers and scholars concerning global English in the Arab world. It brings a new perspective to the phenomenon of global English as today's lingua franca by focusing on an area of the world that is troubled by the spread of English. The book goes to the heart of a linguistic dilemma: the impact of global English on the Arabic language, Arab culture, and identity. New empirical evidence and insights into this problem are presented by a variety of researchers. The majority raise concerns about the long-term viability of Modern Standard Arabic in the face of global English. In light of the ever-expanding growth of global English, this book gives voice to the worries of people in the Arab world about maintaining their language, culture, and identity.

This book provides a nuanced portrait of the complexities found within the cultural and linguistic landscape of the United Arab Emirates, unpacking the ever-shifting dynamics between English and Arabic in today’s era of superdiversity. Employing a qualitative phenomenological approach which draws on a rich set of data from questionnaires to focus groups with Emirati students, Emirati schoolteachers, and expatriate university teachers, Hopkyns problematizes the common binary East-West paradigm focused on the tension between the use of English and Arabic in the UAE. Key issues emerging from the resulting analysis include the differing attitudes towards English and in particular, English Medium Instruction, the impact of this tension on identities, and the ways in which the two languages are employed in distinct ways on an everyday scale. The volume will particularly appeal to students and scholars interested in issues around language and identity, language policy and planning, multilingualism, translanguaging, and language in education.

Co-published with The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF) An important contribution to the emerging body of research-based knowledge about teaching English to native speakers of Arabic, this volume presents empirical studies carried out in Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—a region which has gained notable attention in the past few decades. Each chapter addresses an issue of current concern, and each includes implications for policy, practice, and future research. Nine chapter authors are Sheikh Nahayan Fellows—recipients of doctoral fellowships from The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF). This volume is the first in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English Series, co-published by Routledge and TIRF.

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: College, , language: English, abstract: Sometimes during the fifth century, the Quran that’s written in Arabic introduced the Arabic language to be the language of the Muslim empire that spread around the world: Nadvi (2003) “Arabic became the official language of a world empire whose boundaries stretched from the Oxus River in Central Asia to the Atlantic Ocean, and even northward into the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. As Islam continued to spread through the world, Arabic inherently followed.”(P. 2). Arabic became prestige because of the variety of sciences that were invented by Arabs like Chemistry, Algebra and Astronomy. Things have changed today, and the language that is mostly used around the world is the English language due to the advanced technology and the political power that USA, and the English speaking countries has in the world. Hollywood movies and pop culture have a big impact in spreading English language throughout the world. Middle Eastern countries, especially gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Iraq have been heavily influenced by English Language in the last few years. Since Islam has urged people to learn other nations’ language for security purposes, English language has been taking big part of the Arabic speaking countries. That desire to learn other languages has increased since the second Gulf war in 2003.

Though diverse, the Arab world boasts a unique culture and native language, both of which are unlike those found in English-speaking countries. Perhaps due to the nature of these differences, Arab-Western relations have been described as existing on one of the world’s great cultural fault-lines. Debate about the potential effects, both positive and negative, of English-medium education and the learning of English in the region’s schools and universities is one expression of this. Even as debate continues, issues of politics, culture, social mobility, and identity are played out in the English language classrooms of the Arab world on a daily basis. The current volume explores some of the concerns related to the place of English and English-medium education in the Arab world. It examines issues of the relationship between English, Arabic, cultural identity and power in the region within a historical and contemporary framework; the experiences of learners from Arabic-medium secondary schools adjusting to English-medium colleges; and the challenges and potential rewards of promoting student-centered classrooms and technology in traditionally teacher-centered environments. These issues are explored from the perspectives of teachers, students, researchers and other stakeholders in Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Sudan.

Language and Identity in the Arab World explores the inextricable link between language and identity, referring particularly to the Arab world. Spanning Indonesia to the United States, the Arab world is here imagined as a continually changing one, with the Arab diaspora asserting its linguistic identity across the world. Crucial questions on transforming linguistic landscapes, the role and implications of migration, and the impact of technology on language use are explored by established and emerging scholars in the field of applied and socio-linguistics. The book asks such crucial questions as how language contact affects or transforms identity, how language reflects changing identities among migrant communities, and how language choices contribute to identity construction in social media. As well as appreciating the breadth and scope of the Arab world, this anthology focuses on the transformative role of language within indigenous and migrant communities as they negotiate between their heritage languages and those spoken by the wider society. Investigating the ways in which identity continues to be imagined and re-constructed in and among Arab communities, this book is indispensable to students, teachers, and anyone who is interested in language contact, linguistic landscapes, and minority language retention as well as the intersections of language and technology.

This volume sets out to investigate the linguistic ecologies of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai, with chapters that combine empirical and theoretical approaches to the sociolinguistics of multilingualism. One important feature of this publication is that the five parts of the collection deal with such key issues as the historical dimension, language policies and language planning, contemporary societal multilingualism, multilingual language acquisition, and the localized Englishes of global cities. The first four sections of the volume provide a multi-levelled and finely-detailed description of multilingual diversity of three global cities, while the final section discusses postcolonial Englishes in the context of multilingual language acquisition and language contact.

The Routledge Handbook of Arabic and Identity offers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of studies that relate the Arabic language in its entirety to identity. This handbook offers new trajectories in understanding language and identity more generally and Arabic and identity in particular. Split into three parts, covering ‘Identity and Variation’, ‘Identity and Politics’ and ‘Identity Globalisation and Diversity’, it is the first of its kind to offer such a perspective on identity, linking the social world to identity construction and including issues pertaining to our current political and social context, including Arabic in the diaspora, Arabic as a minority language, pidgin and creoles, Arabic in the global age, Arabic and new media, Arabic and political discourse. Scholars and students will find essential theories and methods that relate language to identity in this handbook. It is particularly of interest to scholars and students whose work is related to the Arab world, political science, modern political thought, Islam and social sciences including: general linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology, literature media studies and Islamic studies.