Language repertoires and attitudes of students in the United Arab Emirates

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Jakob Leimgruber; Professor Dr. Peter Siemund
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418465998

• Final Report Year: 2022

Final Report Abstract

The initial research questions of the project can be summarized here as follows. The sample of participants revealed a wide range of languages used in the UAE, with English and Arabic playing the most important roles. Individual repertoires differ, but multilingualism is the norm; English acts as a common language. Self-reported proficiencies differ by citizenship groups, with Emiratis typically reporting lower levels in English than the other groups. By contrast, Arabic proficiency is evaluated lowest among participants of South Asian origin. The language attitudes part of our questionnaire revealed interesting differences in terms of the identity-bearing functions of both English and Arabic: participants of Arab background (including Emiratis and citizens of other Arab nations), perhaps predictably, found that Arabic was important both for indexing cultural heritage and personal identity, in contrast to non-Arabs, for whom Arabic did not play this role. The English language, on the other hand, was found by both groups to be important for the expression of personal identity, whereas it plays only a small role for cultural heritage. The project also made initial strides towards a better description of the local variety of English. While data analysis and interpretation is still ongoing, trends were found in the use of the discourse marker like, which indicate that UAE English exhibits a behavior similar to that found in other high-contact settings where English is a lingua franca. In sum, the project can be described as having been completed satisfactorily. Future research ought to complement these results with studies in different socio-economic settings in the UAE, thus providing a more complete picture of the (socio-)linguistic variation present in the country.

Publications

• Multilingual Global Cities. (2020, 11, 29). American Geophysical Union (AGU).
  Peter, Siemund & Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.
  
• Multilingualism and the role of English in the United Arab Emirates. World Englishes, 40(2), 191-204.
  Siemund, Peter; Al‐Issa, Ahmad & Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.
  
• Multilingualism and the Role of English in the United Arab Emirates, with views from Singapore and Hong Kong. Research Developments in World Englishes (2021). American Geophysical Union (AGU).
  Siemund, Peter; Al-Issa, Ahmad; Rahbari, Sharareh & Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.
  
• "We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English. Frontiers in Communication, 7 (2022, 2, 11).
  Lorenz, Eliane
  
• Managing and Investing in Hybrid Identities in the Globalized United Arab Emirates. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 23(6), 955-972.
  Leimgruber, Jakob R. E.; Al-Issa, Ahmad; Lorenz, Eliane & Siemund, Peter
  
• Multilingual Development. (2023, 1, 5). American Geophysical Union (AGU).
  Siemund, Peter