Multilingualism and the Role of English in the United Arab Emirates, with views from Singapore and Hong Kong

Siemund, Peter; Al‐Issa, Ahmad; Rahbari, Sharareh; Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.

doi:10.5040/9781350167087.ch-006

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Prior to participating in the interviews, the students completed a comprehensive online survey that was specifically developed for the project LARES based on Siemund et al (2014) and Leimgruber et al (2018). 6 The survey consisted of questions and agreement statements concerning the demographic, educational, and socioeconomic background, as well as language use and language attitudes (see Siemund et al, 2020;Siemund and Leimgruber, 2021). 7 With this, it is possible to outline and assess the migration history, educational background, language history, and attitudes towards English and Arabic.…”

Section: The Lares Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This population distribution ultimately creates a complex linguistic landscape (Boyle, 2011) and necessarily results in intense language contact at all levels of society (Siemund et al, 2020;Siemund and Leimgruber, 2021;Siemund, 2022). reported that there are more than 100 languages represented in the UAE, which are, apart from Arabic and English (which are listed as "principal languages" on Ethnologue 2 ), for example, Bengali, French, Farsi, Hindi, Malayalam, Pashto, Punjabi, Somali, Tagalog, Telugu, and Urdu.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Boyle hypothesized shortly after Fussel (2011) that the English found in the UAE "should in time become 'UAE English', a variety, perhaps, with a distinct South Asian flavour" (2012, p. 321). Others, however, remark approximately 10 years later that a "local norm of Dubai or Gulf English" has not yet emerged and that "it remains to be seen if it will ever develop" (Leimgruber and Siemund, 2021, p. 1;see also;Ahmed, 2021;Siemund et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English

Lorenz

2022

Front. Commun.

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is characterized by extensive language contact. Although Arabic is the official language, practically all communication in general as well as in higher education, in particular, takes place in English. The current study reports from the larger project Language, Attitudes, and Repertoires in the Emirates (LARES, 2019–2021) and investigates the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) among university students in Sharjah, one of the seven sovereign emirates of the UAE. A spoken corpus based on 58 semi-structured interviews is used to examine the use of the discourse marker like. It has been shown to be a ubiquitous feature of English no longer confined to American English and occurs frequently in the corpus. It doubtlessly is a prominent discourse marker in the type of English spoken among the heterogeneous group of multicultural university students considered here. Although a large individual variation with respect to normalized frequencies of like can be observed, none of the social variables (i.e., gender, citizenship, L1, year of birth, number of languages, college, self-assessed proficiency in English, and English usage score) included in the analysis account for this variability. Instead, I argue that like as a discourse marker is part of the English repertoire of all students and appears to be even more frequently used than in other English varieties. This supports previous research arguing for an intensification of language change in ELF contexts as well as high individual variation as a characteristic of multilingual ELF users.

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Section: The Lares Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English

Lorenz

2022

Front. Commun.

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“…This multilingualism is due in part to the presence of large numbers of expatriate workers. English is the dominant language in the Gulf even though Arabic is the national language (Siemund et al, 2021). Other languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and Tagalog are widely spoken.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Study of Language Preference among the Children of Kashmiri Speech Community Living in Jizan Region, Saudi Arabia

2023

RHSS

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A language dies when nobody speaks it anymore" (Crystal, 2000). He further says that the most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual with another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original, heritage language. Kashmir is a multilingual area where Kashmiri forms the mother tongue of majority of population; Urdu serves as the second language followed by English. This linguistic scenario changes when children reside in an international community. They shift from Kashmiri to other language/s due to less contact with their own speech community. As a result, the language preference changes according to their linguistic requirement. The present study aimed at investigating the linguistic effect on children residing in Saudi Arabia especially in Jizan region. In addition, the research focused on the intergenerational transmission of languages by exploring the reasons which languages, as their first and second, parents wanted their children to learn. The data for the present study was collected online by distributing online structured questionnaires to the target population. Several social media platforms were used to collect data. The preferred method of data collection ensured that there was an equal representation of the target population (children aged 6-16 years). The respondents were the Kashmiri children who study in different international schools in Jizan region of Saudi Arabia. The data was tabulated and analyzed by applying descriptive statistical methods. The research concluded that the target group is bilingual in Urdu and English. Though Kashmiri is the home language of the respondents, but it is not the first language (L1) of all. Urdu is the major language used in home context while as English remains the first choice for outside home situations. The use of Kashmiri is restricted to occasions like interaction with back home relatives.

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Are Multilinguals the Better Academic ELF Users?

Siemund¹,

Mueller²

2020

Language Change

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Multilingualism and the Role of English in the United Arab Emirates, with views from Singapore and Hong Kong

Cited by 6 publications

References 26 publications

“We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English

“We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English

A Study of Language Preference among the Children of Kashmiri Speech Community Living in Jizan Region, Saudi Arabia

Are Multilinguals the Better Academic ELF Users?

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