In this post, Rizwan Ahmad and Shaikha Al-Hemaidi (Department of English Literature & Linguistics, Qatar University) examine the specific form this language panic takes in the Gulf countries, where Arabic is in close contact both with the languages of labor migrants from South and South-East Asia and with English as the language of globalization.

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Rizwan Ahmad and Shaikha Al-Hemaidi
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Is Arabic under threat in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, and the UAE, where the number of non-nationals exceeds the nationals? Do non-Arabs living in the GCC pose a threat to the Arabic language and Arab identity? These questions have been the subject of debates not only in the Arabic language media but also conferences and seminars. Since Arabic is a symbol of national identity in the GCC, it is understandable why Arabs may be concerned, but beyond the emotional rhetoric, do facts support the anxiety about the decline of Arabic?

Demographic changes after discovery of oil in GCC

The GCC countries have experienced an influx of migrant workers over the past few decades following the discovery of oil and gas. The massive economic and social projects undertaken by the GCC governments have further created needs for labor and skills that the local population cannot fulfil leading to reliance on temporary foreign labor. In the GCC, non-nationals outnumber the nationals, accounting for 52% of the total population. In the workforces, the percentage of non-nationals is even more pronounced reaching up to 95% in Qatar. While migration into the GCC has brought many benefits to the region, it has also given rise to concerns among the local population that the Arabic language and Arab identity are in danger.

Fear of decline of Arabic

GCC Flag (Image credit: Wikipedia)

In popular discussions, the perceived decline of Arabic is generally attributed to two factors. First, it is argued that the presence of non-Arab migrant population from South and Southeast Asia not only poses a threat to the structure and use of Arabic but also endangers the Arab identity of the youth. Al-Farajānī, a political thinker and a columnist, in an article published on Aljazeera in 2008 argued that the presence of Asians had negative cultural consequences, the most important of which is ifsād al-lughah al-‘Arabīyyah, ‘corruption of the Arabic language’.

In 2013, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Center for Language Planning and Policies, based in Saudi Arabia, organized a conference aimed at developing strategies to strengthen the Arabic language and identity against the backdrop of social, demographic, and economic changes in the GCC. On a panel, Dr. Lateefah Al-Najjar, a professor of Arabic at UAE University, presented a paper on the effects of the Asian workforce on the Arabic language in which she argued that Asian maids and drivers affect the language of children and recommended that the Asian workforce be replaced with Arabs and that the learning of Arabic be a condition of employment in the GCC.

A second source of anxiety comes from the presence of numerous English-medium schools and colleges in the region. In a report published in 2019 on the occasion of UN Arabic Language Day – celebrated annually on December 18 – it was argued that English was a threat to Arabic in the GCC in the same way as French endangers Arabic in Arabic-speaking countries in North Africa. According to another report published in the Economist, in 2022, the youth in the GCC uses English more than Arabic and the use of Arabic is becoming limited to the home domain.

English is literally on the move on the roads of the UAE (Image: Language on the Move)

Some scholarly studies have also argued that English medium schools and colleges in the GCC are a threat to Arabic and Arab identity. A similar fear of the decline of Arabic in the entire Arab World was the theme of a Pan-Arab conference entitled “The Arabic language is in danger: We are all partners in protecting it” held in the UAE in 2013 indicating that the purported decline of Arabic is not limited to the GCC.

Language policy changes in the GCC

The presence of large non-Arab populations has also led to communication problems between monolingual Arabs and non-Arabs. The governments of Qatar and UAE have started to use migrant languages in dealing with issues related to the workforce. At the same time, the concerns about the decline of Arabic have led the countries in the region, especially Qatar and UAE, with the largest foreign populations, to take measures aimed at protecting the Arabic language and identity. In the UAE, the Cabinet passed Resolution Number 21/2 in 2008 whereby all ministries, federal entities, and local government departments were required to use Arabic in all their official communications. In 2015, the Department of Economic Development of Dubai in the UAE issued violation tickets to 29 restaurants for not having their menus in Arabic in addition to not specifying the prices. Similarly, in 2019, Qatar passed the Law on Protection of the Arabic Language which regulates the use of Arabic and foreign languages and provides a fine up to 50,000 Qatari Riyal in case of non-compliance in some cases.

Language decline as proxy for social and political crises

A major shortcoming of the above reports, studies, and conferences is that no concrete evidence was provided to support the purported decline of Arabic. There is no linguistic evidence that Arabic spoken by young people in the GCC shows linguistic influences of their maids and drivers. They may have acquired some words, phrases, and sentences from their languages to communicate with them, which only suggests that their linguistic repertoire has been expanded. In fact, maids and drivers learn to communicate in Arabic with proficiency ranging from broken pidgin Arabic to native-like command. There is a need of systematic research based on empirical data to understand the linguistic effects of maids and drivers on the languages of host society.

Magazine ad for the University of Wollongong’s branch campus in Dubai (Image: Language on the Move)

Moreover, the discourse of the decline of Arabic is not limited to the GCC but covers the entire Arab World, as was the theme of the 2013 conference in the UAE. Yasir Suleiman, a sociolinguist who has written extensively on the Arabic language and identity describes the situation as one of language anxiety, which is less about language and more about social and political tensions and crises besetting the Arab world.

One major external factor that contributes to the anxiety is the presence of English in educational institutions. Another is the demographic changes that the discovery of oil and the massive modernization projects have brought to the GCC countries whereby non-nationals constitute a significant part of the Gulf social and cultural space. Suleiman argues that the discourse of decline of Arabic is a proxy for these social tensions whereby a defense of Arabic becomes a defense of the Arab social and moral order.

The issue of anxiety and fear notwithstanding, something concrete has appeared in the linguistic landscape of the GCC, and maybe even more broadly in the Arab World, which is that for the first time in their history, Arabs are becoming bilingual in their dialect and English.

Before the advent of English-medium international schools and universities, Arabs from the region would seek higher education in other Arab countries such as Egypt and Syria, where the medium of instruction was Arabic. Their level of education would be displayed in their knowledge and use of Standard Arabic.

By contrast, many GCC students today graduate from English-medium schools and international universities in Qatar and the UAE with a better command of English than Standard Arabic, especially in discussing professional issues.

This is part of the anxiety that English is encroaching upon the space of Arabic. However, we know bilingual people can command two languages equally proficiently and use each in its appropriate context. More research is needed to better understand usage patterns at home and in professional spaces. Census data, similar to those collected in bilingual Quebec in Canada could shed empirical light on what language(s) people use in different social domains such as the home, the workplace, or social gathering such as majlis. This might be more productive than the fear about the decline of Arabic that currently prevails.

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Figure 1: The Year of Tolerance Pillars

Jogging along the Abu Dhabi coastline at sunrise, I see small groups of two or three people wearing masks. They are expatriates walking dogs, Emiratis in national dress strolling, fellow joggers escaping lockdown inactivity, and transnational workers clearing fallen date palm leaves from the path. Cautiously wary as I pass each group, I hear snippets of multiple languages being spoken. This is a typically diverse Abu Dhabi scene in highly atypical times.

While Arabic is the official language of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and English is the de facto lingua franca, such labels ‘hide more than they reveal’. Rather, multilingualism and translingual practice is the norm due to its highly diverse population of approximately 200 nationalities, speaking over 100 languages as well as various dialects within diglossic languages such as Arabic. However, power attributed to these languages is far from even. Arabic and English are the most visible in society as reflected in their side-by-side presence on public signage, in education, official channels, and technology. Such a situation results in those proficient in English and Arabic having more access to information than those without. While communication barriers are important to challenge in general, in emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of linguistic inclusion is amplified.

Superdiversity and the year of tolerance in the UAE

In multilingual contexts globally, increasing attention has been given to social justice via the prevalence of the words ‘inclusion’ and ‘tolerance’. Inclusion can be defined as ‘ensuring access for all’ across many sectors. Several inclusion-based government-led initiatives have occurred in the UAE recently. One prominent initiative was the naming of 2019 as the ‘Year of Tolerance’, where all languages, backgrounds, ethnicities and abilities were to be valued. Figure 1 shows the ‘Year of Tolerance Pillars’ prominently displayed on a shopping mall billboard.

Figure 2: Bilingual COVID-19 safety sign

The seven pillars advocate tolerance in the areas of education, community, workplace, culture, legislation, and media as well as establishing the UAE as a model of tolerance. Here, the message of inclusivity as an ethical and moral value is loud and clear. However, even with carefully implemented awareness campaigns on diversity and inclusion, an unprecedented crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic can disrupt such efforts, and rather shine a spotlight on pre-existing societal and linguistic inequities. In addition, a crisis leads to priorities shifting from ideal values to emergency messaging, where instinctual and on-the-spot decisions are made with the resources available. This is often the case with linguistic choices in public spaces where English monolingualism seems to be the preferred or default choice in a moment of crisis.

Linguistic inequalities in a crisis context

In the UAE, top-down government communication relating to the COVID-19 pandemic is suitably multilingual and inclusive. Guidelines and announcements appear in Arabic, English, Hindi, Tagalog, French, and many more languages. Neighboring Gulf states such as Qatar and countries further afield such as China have also ensured that official communication is linguistically diverse. However, it is often the bottom-up ad hoc messages in public spaces which are most visible. This is especially the case for the UAE’s large migrant worker population who may not have access to mobile devices like laptops and smartphones.

Linguistic landscaping, or the analysis of language on signage in public spaces, can tell us a lot about how languages are used and about the power certain languages have over others. ‘Every sign tells a story about who produced it, and about who is selected to consume it’, as Blommaert (2018) points out. Public signage tracks local practices as well as contributing to the COVID-19 era’s zeitgeist. In this sense, locally-produced impromptu thrown-together messages are indeed authentic ‘signs of the time’. Such signs act as sociolinguistic evidence of power dynamics existing between languages and their speakers.

In the UAE, while municipality-issued COVID-19-related messages appear in the country’s two dominant languages, Arabic and English (Figure 2), in many cases make-shift or hand-written signs appear in English only. This is similar to other English-dominant multicultural and multilingual contexts such as London and Sydney.

Figure 3: Bilingual working hours sign and monolingual COVID-19 sign

It is easy to see a contrast between permanent signs with English and Arabic side-by-side, such as a working-hours sign in a pharmacy window (Figure 3), and an impromptu COVID-19 sign which appears only in English. In Figure 3, the latter is typed in large capital letters which fill the page, without the use of other languages, perhaps due to the urgency needed in communicating quickly. The pharmacy owner or clerk who created the sign most probably did so with a sense of emergency where lack of time and resources did not allow for consideration of the society’s linguistically-diverse population.

A further example of a make-shift monolingual COVID-19 sign can be seen in Figure 4. Here, lifeguards at an Abu Dhabi beachside community have written a message in the sand warning residents to ‘stay home, stay safe’. The manager who instructed the sign to be made on a scorching mid-March afternoon, decided to use English only. Was this perhaps due to limited space on the beach? Was it deemed impractical to write the message in several languages considering the size of the letters? Whatever the reasoning, the space which could have been used for another version of the message (e.g. Arabic), was instead given to a set of images including a house, heart and the ‘sun cross’ symbol (circle with cross inside) meaning eternity or the spiritual whole.

While the use of ‘English only’ may be appropriate in compounds renowned for ‘Jumeirah Janes’ (pampered British housewives living in English-speaking bubbles), since 2008 such monolingual communities have become less common. The beach community featured in Figure 4, for example, is linguistically diverse with Australians living next to Koreans, and Emiratis neighboring Swedes, as well as many dual nationality families, including my own (UK/Canada). Recently, nationalities which had not previously been drawn to the UAE are arriving for work opportunities. Accompanying family members sometimes have only basic English. For example, the number of Koreans living in the UAE has grown to 13,000 residents in what is known as the ‘Korean wave’. With most expatriate households being double-income, live-in nannies, who are usually from the Philippines, are also part of such communities. Despite the multilingual composition of residents, English is often the sole language used for communication in emergency contexts (Figures 3 and 4).

Inclusivity in crisis communication

Although the beach community shown in Figure 4 is home to mainly mid to high-income professionals, it is also the workplace of hundreds of laborers who are now called ‘essential workers’. Arriving on buses from the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, they spend their days working on the upkeep of existing buildings or on constructing new residential towers whose owners have deadlines to meet in order not to lose certain incentives. Figure 5 shows essential workers cleaning apartment windows while wearing masks but not perhaps social distancing, as is a government mandate. They do not have the ‘luxury’ of self-isolating, as many residents do, and it is clear that the message on the beach (Figure 4) was not intended for their eyes.

Figure 4: Covid-19 warning sign written in the sand (Photographer: Genevieve Leclerc)

Nevertheless, as laborers spend their days at their worksite, the make-shift monolingual signs in shops, lifts and  other public spaces represent their main way of accessing safety warnings. Monolingual communication in contexts of disasters or crisis has been named ‘disaster linguicism’, where linguistic minorities (not necessarily in number, but in power or prestige) are particularly vulnerable due to language-based discrimination at multiple levels.

Concerns over the lack of access laborers may have to COVID-19 warnings have been voiced on community Facebook pages as well as in national newspapers. Such concerns have led some residents to try and bridge the communication gap. For example, Indian expatriate teenager, Suchetha Satish, composed COVID-awareness songs in 21 Indian languages including Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Assamese. The songs urge people to social distance and wash hands. Such efforts are perhaps aimed at offsetting the prominence of monolingual (English) or bilingual (Arabic/ English) signs in public spaces. However, the potential success of such initiatives is debatable, due to many laborers having limited access to certain mediums. Besides, even with access to such songs, social distancing is not often an option in essential worker contexts, as seen in Figure 5.

Linguistic landscaping: An eye-opener for future action

Figure 5: Essential workers wearing masks during COVID-19 times

For those without access to official multilingual COVID-19 warnings, gaining accurate information about the crisis through a minority language can be a challenge. This highlights linguistic inequality in relation to crisis communication, as well as putting into sharper focus class divides. In top-down initiatives promoting tolerance, there is a danger of glossing over hidden exclusions in favour of celebrating ‘linguistically flexible neoliberal urbanites’. As most sociolinguistic research in the UAE focuses on the language choices and experiences of Emiratis, transnational linguistic experiences are under-researched, especially those from less privileged groups. In this exceptional time when the slogan ‘We are all in it together’ or ‘#TGether’ (as seen in Figure 2) is advocated, it is important to draw attention to the incongruities between slogans of inclusion and the reality on the ground. As Jones (2020) states, ‘Coronavirus is not some grand leveler: it is an amplifier of existing inequalities, injustices and insecurities’ or as Hurley (2020) puts it, ‘Coronavirus exacerbates the fault lines’. Although this is a time of reflection on what a new normal may look like, ‘often these seemingly revolutionarily happenings ultimately result in retrenchment of a status quo defined by durable inequalities’.

The Year of Tolerance supports including all, even those who speak languages other than English and Arabic. However, the pragmatic choices made at the height of the COVID-19 crisis show English is often the default choice. By excluding some, there are significant ramifications for the spread of the virus. Concerned looks on the faces of the diverse groups described in the opening coastline scene of this blog show us this is an issue affecting society as a whole. Thus, the need to ‘include the reality of linguistic diversity into our normal procedures and processes, including disaster preparation’ is pressing. Going forward, a critical look at the signage and warning messages in our landscapes can be eye-opening, with the goal of substantiating the priority of tolerance and inclusion.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Advertisement for Wall Street English Institute

“Do you speak English?” is a frequently asked question, which Saudi people must be prepared to answer with a confident “Yes!” when applying for a job or to a university. In Saudi Arabia, as in many other places, knowledge of English has become a major prerequisite for many positions and in numerous disciplines. This demand for English has opened the way for an explosion of private institutes teaching the English language, where English is regarded as a commercial product that can earn good money for the purveyor. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the promotional discourses disseminated by these institutions conceal language ideologies that shape learners’ beliefs regarding English learning and its teaching.

My master’s thesis explored the approaches that English language teaching institutes use to persuade their audience that they should learn English in their institution. It examines language ideologies by looking at how English language learning is presented in the online advertisements produced by these institutes, and at the ways in which they represent themselves to their audience. To do this, I analyse visuals and texts to see how institutions make use of a range of language resources in promoting their services.

The analysis of the institutes’ ads shows that, in their attempt to persuade a potential audience to enroll, they conceptualize English as a global language. For example, English learning is described as totally advantageous as it supposedly opens the gates to job opportunities, education and travel. English learning is also represented as fun, confidence-building, and personally empowering.

Advertisement for Adwaa Almarefah Institute

The findings also reveal concepts that simultaneously mystify and oversimplify English learning. For instance, native-English speaking teachers are described in idealistic terms; there are claims that the use of specific textbooks will guarantee successful language learning and that success in global English proficiency tests such as IELTS or TOFEL is assured.

To be presented with such ideologies must affect people’s beliefs about what English learning involves. The elevated position given to English in the ads must diminish the status of Arabic in the minds of the younger generation. Thus, the English language teaching industry in Saudi Arabia must consider an approach that avoids presenting English learning as a totally beneficial phenomenon. In addition, other misrepresentations, such as the value of a specific textbook or considering native-English speaking teachers as being the best, should be reconsidered by the industry as these representations may deceive English learners regarding the utility of other language textbooks or the characteristics of the ideal teacher.

My PhD research will expand on the study of the language ideologies underlying the promotional discourses of English language teaching institutes in Saudi Arabia. Videos, pictures and texts taken from the institutes’ websites and Twitter accounts will be included in the study. The thesis will also explore how audiences actually receive the promotional discourses of the institutions.

Reference

Alkhalil, S. F. A. (2018). Promoting English in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Advertisements for Private English Language Teaching Institutes. (MRes), Macquarie University.

Business card promoting private English tuition

In Iran, as in many other countries around the globe, the craze for learning English has been on the rise. This tendency is attributed to, inter alia, the country’s rather young population who need the language for various purposes such as furthering education abroad, immigration or trade. As a consequence, all kinds of English teaching have become big business. While the majority of learners of English attend private English language institutes, private tutoring, too, has mushroomed in the past few years.

In the past few months, I have been collecting marketing materials for private English language tuition in Isfahan. While well-established language institutes usually rely on local newspapers, magazines or TV channels to promote their English classes, individual language tutors choose less expensive methods of advertising. The main promotional method is the distribution of brochures, fliers and business cards.

Despite the low costs associated with their production, these advertising materials can easily be distributed among target audiences which often include those who need a certain score on standardized tests such as TOEFL or IELTS in a rather short period of time. Business cards are usually personally distributed among tutors’ networks. Additionally, they are also found in the city’s language bookshops. Brochures and fliers are found in all kinds of public spaces frequented by young people.

A close look at such marketing materials enables us to explore social issues embedded in the discourse of the private TESOL industry in Iran today. In my corpus of more than 100 marketing materials for private tutoring, the following ideologies of English language learning can be found:

• Learning English is associated with personal success. One business card, for instance, has the Persian mottoدانش زبان انگلیسی قدرت دنیای امروز است  on the front and the English translation “English knowledge is power” on the back.
• The ideal tutor is a person who has the experience of living in an English-speaking country, usually in Australia, Canada and the UK. Another business card, for example, describes the tutor as a person who has lived in Australia for five years (٥ سال زندگی در استرالیا) and uses the slogan Learn English from one who has lived in an English-speaking country.
• The ideal tutor is linked to an international organisation. Examples of such organizations, which are typically included in brackets after the tutor’s name, include “TEFL Canada”, “British Council” and “ETS”.
• English learners come in distinct groups based on age, gender or occupation. One example promotes semi-private English classes for housewives (انگلیسی برای خانمهای خانه دار), who, as the description on the flier reveals, “are usually free in the morning and are able to attend English classes.” In this context the English language is dividable into different packages which are separately accessible. Other examples includeانگلیسی برای کودکان  (English for children), انگلیسی برای نوجوانان (English for teenagers), انگلیسی برای توریست ها (English for tourists) andانگلیسی برای تجار  (English for businessmen), to name a few. No information is provided about the course content and the name of the course corresponds to the social role of the target group (e.g., ‘housewives’).

Overall, the unprecedented demand for English has caused English tutors in Iran, as in many other countries in the world, to compete for students. In this respect, English language tutors are driven by the competition for profit and English language learning is thus marketed in specific ways. As my corpus shows, private tutors typically use a variety of strategies in order to be deemed legitimate and meritorious. It appears that in this context the quest for a better tutor (as a form of identity) has long replaced the identification of practices designed to address the complexity of language learning.

Is this Arabic or English? Or is that asking the wrong question? (Transliteration: sbaisi tinisi tshikn and shrmb*)

I’ve often wondered what linguistic theory would look like if its foundations did not lie in 19^th century Europe and 20^th century America but in 21^st century Dubai. Would we still think predominantly in terms of discrete languages or would we take a more holistic view of communication? Would we treat linguistic diversity as the default and consider monolingualism as an exception worthy of special (but somewhat marginal) attention? Would mainstream journals deal with diversity in communication as the norm and would we then have some smaller special interest journals such as a Journal of Monolingualism and maybe another one devoted to International Studies in Monolingual Education?

A coach at the Dubai Ice Rink yells at a group of kids: “Boro, boro! Let’s go, boys! Yallah!” Does it make sense to think about this utterance in terms of code-switching? In the most mainstream current analysis of this exclamation, the coach would be seen as mixing Persian, English and Arabic and we would then have to ask why he is mixing. As the audience remains constant and he is basically saying the same thing (‘let’s go’) three times, we would most likely start to muse about the identities he is claiming by switching: Is he trying to affiliate with the Persian, English and Arabic “speech communities” (another of those theoretical concepts that no longer make much sense)?

I overheard this interaction as a bystander and so cannot claim any further insights as to what the coach was trying to do other than the obvious: he was trying to get a group of exhausted 8-12-year-olds to keep together in a crowd and to keep them moving. From the labels on the kids’ uniforms, I know that they are from a school attended only by Emirati students (rather than non-nationals who make up more than 80% of the UAE’s population). In terms of their ethnic looks, the kids look all different – as befits the inhabitants of a place that has been a kind of way-station at the cross-roads of Africa, Asia and Europe since time immemorial. I cannot guess where the coach is from. As I just said, going by looks is even more pointless in Dubai than in most other parts of the world. He could have been Emirati but the statistics about teachers in national schools suggest that he is more likely to hail from elsewhere.

Khaleeji (Gulf Arabic) has always been a “mixed” language and variationists break it up further into Coastal and Saudi; the former can be subdivided into Emirati, Kuwaiti, Omani etc.; Emirati can be subdivided into Bahrani, Bedouin, Coastal, Shihhi, etc.; not to mention Ajami, another traditional language of the Gulf, which is mostly classified as an “Arabicized Persian dialect” or some such. You get the idea: it’s complicated …

If Khaleeji as the ancestral way of communicating in Dubai challenges linguistic theory, contemporary linguistic and communicative practices render it completely useless. Artists and designers have been among the first to have embraced obvious heterogeneity as foundational rather than condemning it as deviant. Salem Al-Qassimi, a designer specializing in bilingual urban design, for instance, refers to Dubai’s seemingly chaotic linguistic practices as “Arabish.” Arabish originally referred to Arabic texting in the Latin script but “is now more than just that. It is a way of speaking and a way of life,” he explains.

So, what does all this complexity mean for linguistic theory? We need to step back and let go of linear lenses such as the monolingual and variationist ones. In fact, you do not need to spend time in Dubai to do that; we could also turn to the natural sciences. The physicist (and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) Ilya Prigogine wrote in his 1997 book The End of Certainty that linearity is no longer a viable form of scientific thinking. He explains that linear science only works well where it deals with phenomena that are close to equilibrium.

The social contexts where many mainstream linguistic theories developed could be described as spaces of equilibrium and – combined with the desire to imitate classical science – it is not surprising that order and stability became the bedrock of linguistic thinking.

However, the natural sciences have moved on, noting “fluctuations, instability, multiple choices, and limited predictability at all levels of observation” (Prigogine 1997, p. 4). Chaos theory recognizes that, as complexity increases in a system, precision and relevance become mutually exclusive.

Trying to describe even a mundane little utterance such as “Boro, boro! Let’s go, boys! Yallah!” precisely with current linguistic tools (“Arabic,” “code-switching,” “code-mixing,” “English,” “multilingualism,” “Persian,” “speech community”) renders the analysis either meaningless or irrelevant.

Whether we take our inspiration for a new linguistic theory from the chaotic world around us or the natural sciences may be a matter of preference but change our lenses we must. Bob Hodge has a useful preliminary introduction to chaos theory for TESOL practitioners here.

*Standard English: “Spicy Tennessee Chicken and Shrimp”

Constructing language learning as global choice on melale.ir

Persian version of Vahid Parvaresh, “Supermarket Language Learning”; translated by Behnam Keimasi (بهنام کیماسی)

در ایران، همانند بسیار دیگری از کشورها، دولت به صورت مرسوم نقش پررنگی در عرصه یادگیری زبان دوم ایفا نموده است و امتیاز انحصاری سیاست گذاری های رسمی را در دست دارد. در این زمینه، یک سیاست رسمی کلی که وزارت آموزش و پرورش آن را تدوین و تنظیم نموده است، معرفی زبان انگلیسی (و عربی) به دانش آموزان پس از رسیدن به سن 11 سالگی می باشد. هر چند این سیاست، آن گونه که از این مصاحبه کوتاه اما آشکار کننده با معاون وزیر آموزش و پرورش بر می آید، هم اکنون در حال بازنگری می باشد. طبق گفته های معاون وزیر، سیاست جدید به مدارس دولتی اجازه می دهد تا زبان های خارجی (نه تنها انگلیسی و عربی، بلکه فرانسوی و آلمانی) را در قالب “بسته های سوپرمارکتی” گوناگون به دانش آموزان پیشنهاد دهند تا آنها بتوانند هر زبانی را که بیشتر دوست دارند انتخاب نمایند. علاوه بر این، سیاست جدید به دانش آموزان این اجازه را می دهد تا بسیار زودتر از 11 یا 12 سالگی به “انتخاب زبانی که دوست دارند” بپردازند. این حقیقت که وزارت آموزش و پرورش ایران تصمیم گرفته است تا از سیاست زبان خارجی سفت وسخت خود در راستای اجرای یک سیاست انعطاف پذیر تر دست بکشد، قابل توجه است.

اما چه چیزی می تواند موجب این تغییر باشد؟ یا به عبارتی دیگر، چه اتفاقی افتاده است که وزارت آموزش و پرورش را بر آن داشته است تا سیاستِ زبانِ خارجی خود که همواره تنها شامل زبان های انگلیسی و عربی بوده است را بازنگری کند؟ مصاحبه پاسخی قطعی ارائه نمی کند اما نگاهی موشکافانه تر به سیاست های اجرا شده در مدارس غیر دولتی در فهم موضوع به ما کمک می کند.

در ایران نابردباریِ مرسوم در خصوص تنوع زبانی – همین حقیقت که آموزش زبان های خارجی محدود به زبان های انگلیسی و عربی شده است – با سیاست های زبانی که بخش خصوصی اعمال می کند، همخوانی ندارد. مدارسی که به بخش خصوصی تعلق دارند، خیلی وقت است که به آموزش زبان های فرانسوی، آلمانی و انگلیسی به کودکان، اغلب از سن 5 سالگی، پرداخته اند. نتیجه این آموزش، بازاری رقابتی نه تنها برای زبان انگلیسی که برای زبان های فرانسوی و آلمانی بوده که با نابردباریِ مرتبط با تنوع زبانی در تضاد است. بدین گونه بخش آموزش خصوصی شکل های جدیدی از کالای زبانی را پدید می آورد؛ حقیقتی که مسائل پیچیده ای را در رابطه با تغییر تعادلِ میانِ سیاست های زبانی دولتی و خصوصی به وجود می آورد.

علاوه بر این، اینترنت فضای بزرگ و تقریبا غیرقابل کنترلی را برای مدارس خصوصی جهت استفاده از بسته های آموزشی زبان فراهم می آورد.  ملل یکی از چنین وب سایت هایی است که متعلق به یک مدرسه خصوصی با نام ملل می باشد. هدف ادعایی مدرسه تشویق دوزبانگی از طریق روش موضوع محور می باشد. مجموعه آموزشی ملل آموزش زبان های انگلیسی و فرانسوی را فراهم آورده است. در این محیط، شکل های کاملا انعطاف پذیرِ آموزش زبان ارائه می شود تا پاسخگوی نیازهای گوناگون مشتریان باشد. به عنوان مثال، در این مجموعه یادگیری زبان فرانسوی (در ایران!) طبق سیاست های وضع شده توسط اتحادیه اروپا ممکن است. بنابراین بسته های آموزشی زبان در شکل ها و اندازه های گوناگون ارائه می شوند آن چنان که گویی وارد یک سوپرمارکت بسیار بزرگ زبانی شده اید.

به طور کلی، این که دولت تصمیم گرفته تا سیاست های مرتبط با زبان خارجی سابق خود را اصلاح کند به نظر پاسخی به تغییرات ایجاد شده در روش هایی است که از طریق آن هم دانش آموزان و هم والدین در جریانِ گفتمانِ آموزشِ زبانِ بخشِ خصوصی قرار گرفته اند؛ جایی که آنها به مصرف کننده تبدیل شده اند. بسته های سوپرمارکتی نه تنها در بخش خصوصی که هم اکنون در بخش آموزش عمومی نیز به این مصرف کنندگان پیشنهاد می شود. در این روند، سیاست گذاری مربوط به زبان های خارجیِ مرسوم و ریشه دار نیز همسویِ “انتظاراتِ جهانی” می شود.

برچسب ها: زبان عربی، مصرف، زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان جهانی، زبان فرانسوی، جهانی شدن، ایران، آموزش زبان، سیاست زبانی.

“Imported Teacher”, the British Council’s new campaign in Thailand

As a language educator in Thailand my in-box is always full of invitations to conferences devoted to ASEAN and English language teaching. At such conferences, keynote speakers from the UK or the US make similar, if not identical, arguments for the importance of English as a lingua franca in the linguistically diverse ASEAN region. Their trump card is normally the economic value of English.

For example, at a seminar I attended recently in Bangkok, an American TESOL celebrity told an audience of Thai English teachers that: “English-speakers earn THREE times more than non-English speakers” [capitalization original to her Powerpoint slide]. This was a fact, she assured us, by referring to a report about English in the Middle East and North Africa. Commissioned by the British Council, the report claims that English-speaking receptionists in a city such as Bagdad in Iraq can earn three times more than their non-English-speaking counterparts. It’s impossible to determine the sample size but the results are based on 50 job ads for all kinds of professions. Only receptionists have a three-fold earning differential. To generalize on the basis of a handful of job ads for receptionists in Baghdad to a global assertion is, well, problematic, to put it mildly …

Propaganda such as this result in a single-minded wave of English fever. Of course, this is not unique to Thailand – Japan, South Korea and many other Asian nations also have their hearts set firmly for English. But it is important to ask ourselves if such a narrowly focused belief in the power of English – based as it is on questionable data and assumptions – is a good thing for Thailand and for its ASEAN project. The reality of ASEAN nations today are the ever-increasing flows of people and businesses from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds; in such a fluid transnational space, chances are that languages other than English are more useful or more realistic choices.

Let me illustrate this point by an example of a major Japanese company in Thailand. This company is considering providing English lessons for their Thai drivers, whose job it is to drive expat Japanese employees and their families stationed in Bangkok. Most of these Thai drivers speak poor English. As many of the Japanese employees and their families themselves have limited English proficiency, communication between the two parties is rather constrained.

A Japanese expat wife, whose husband works for this company, told me that she was scared of asking the driver to drive her and her children to their school in the morning. Because they don’t have a language in common, a number of failed communications have led to mistrust between them. Funded by her husband’s company, she’s learning English at a school in Bangkok, but with only a one-hour lesson per week she’s making little progress. Frustrated, her family’s decision to solve this problem with the driver was rather unique – they moved next to their children’s school.

The ideology of English as ‘useful’ is obviously implicit in the company’s consideration of providing English lessons for their drivers. It seems to keep the company from considering a more efficient option: teaching Japanese to the Thai drivers and Thai to the Japanese expats. In addition to such lessons where they can learn basics, both groups will get many daily practice opportunities with each other.

Increasing numbers of Japanese restaurants are opening in Bangkok

Despite last year’s flooding that affected over 450 Japanese companies in Thailand, more Japanese companies are planning to launch their business here. According to Teikoku Data Bank (2011), 3,133 Japanese companies are registered in Thailand, and approximately 37,000 expats (plus approx. 13,000 non-company worker Japanese) are sent from Japan to work in this country. According to some Japanese expats and business owners I’ve met, they need not English-speaking but Japanese-speaking Thais or Japanese-Thai translators. While they also pay lip-service to the importance of English and are often forced to use English, they would actually prefer to use Japanese in business negotiations and feel much more at ease in the presence of Japanese-speaking Thai interpreters. According to one consulting company, the demand for Thai-Japanese interpreters is on the rise. However, they are difficult to find. Actually, Japanese-Thai interpreters can easily earn much higher salaries than English-Thai interpreters!

For instance, a newly opened Japanese restaurant hired a Japanese-speaking Thai waiter and his starting salary is 40,000 baht – four times more than his non-Japanese speaking co-workers, twice as much as that of my English-speaking Thai friend working for an international education firm in Bangkok, and close to that of a foreign lecturer with a PhD at a reputable university in Bangkok.

Furthermore, one Japanese expat working for a major Japanese company told me that English is often not the preferred choice of language among their increasing number of Korean and Chinese clients operating in Thailand. For instance, a Japanese expat, Ken, whom I met recently, had a meeting with a Korean expat businessman in Bangkok. Ken began his meeting by greeting in Korean (Ken is Japan-born Korean with basic Korean proficiency) and mostly used Thai and sometimes English during the meeting as his Korean client speaks good Thai but cannot speak English. He had a Thai secretary who translated Ken’s ‘no-so-perfect Thai’ into ‘proper’ Thai to her Thai-speaking Korean boss.

For Thailand to be competitive in ASEAN and the global economy, English will continue to be of importance, of course. However, it seems short-sighted and dangerous to ignore other languages. As Thailand prepares for the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 and as it strives to attract foreign investments from ASEAN Plus Three nations Japan, China and South Korea, the importance of a workforce that speaks their languages is paramount.

The need for more diverse language education and its link to employment needs to be based on empirical research evidence of the emerging language needs of international employers actually operating in Thailand in order to achieve positive policy change. Currently, this evidence doesn’t exist – a blind spot created by the relentless propaganda for English.

Saeed Rezaei at Macquarie University’s idyllic North Ryde campus

Saeed Rezaei is currently a visiting scholar in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University. He will deliver a seminar about the sociolinguistics of identity in Iran next week and so Language on the Move caught up with him to learn more about the person behind the research.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Born in the southern city of Bushehr in Iran, I received my early education in my hometown and my higher education in Isfahan and Tehran. I studied for a B.A. in English Literature at Isfahan University and then for an M.A. in Applied Linguistics at Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU) in Tehran. I am now a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics at ATU and also a lecturer at the Languages and Linguistics Center at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.

I was recently awarded a scholarship from the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology to further my research in Australia and specifically to work at Macquarie University with Professor Ingrid Piller.

In addition to my linguistics research, I also have literary interests and have contributed an encyclopedic entry to The Encyclopædia Iranica at Columbia University. My contribution (in press) is about Manouchehr Atashi, the modern Persian Poet who initiated a new movement in Persian Poetry, jaryan-e sher-e nab (‘pure poetry movement’).

Can you tell us a bit more about your PhD research?

My research is about language, culture and identity in the Iranian EFL context and how modernity and globalization through English language education have shaped Iranian language learners’ linguistic and cultural identity. My approach is mixed-methods and I investigate Iranian English language learners’ linguistic and cultural identities through both a validated questionnaire and post-survey interviewing. The main objective is to research how factors such as L1 background, age, ethnicity, or language proficiency influence perceptions and performances of their linguistic and cultural identities.

What was the inspiration for your PhD research?

I am interested in the social aspects of language and this interest stems from my readings in the sociology of language but also Persian and world literature and cinema. A fascination with linguistics was bestowed upon me through literature. Additionally, I should acknowledge my mentors and inspiring teachers such as Dr. Mohammad Khatib, Dr. Fahimeh Marefat and Dr. Sasan Baleghizadeh.

How and why did you choose to come to Macquarie University?

My first inspiration came from Professor Ingrid Piller’s lecture tour in the Middle East, especially her talks on the social dimensions of language learning and intercultural communication. Since then, I’ve discovered the immense breadth and diversity of Linguistics at Macquarie University, which is ranked in the top 50 linguistics programs globally.

You also teach at Sharif University of Technology. Can you tell us a bit more about your program and your students?

I joined Sharif University of Technology in 2009 and since then I have enjoyed teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Sharif University of Technology is undeniably the best university in Iran and highly regarded internationally. I am truly honored to be academically based there. Our newly established Languages and Linguistics Center commenced two graduate divisions of TEFL and Computational Linguistics in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Since then, we have had several graduates who are either teaching English in Iran or are studying for a PhD elsewhere.

Can you tell us a bit more about Applied Linguistics in Iran?

Applied Linguistics, and particularly TEFL, in Iran has experienced a drastic change in the past 10 years with a wave of early career researchers joining universities across the country. There are many national and international conferences in the field held in Iran every year. However, there are also many problems with existing language education programs at both school and university levels.

What are your post-PhD plans?

Research is my passion and so my dream is to continue doing research as a post-doctoral fellow on an interdisciplinary project that allows me to make use of my expertise in sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and Iranian studies.

Languages of the Middle East (Source: The Gulf/2000 Project)

The next seminar of the 2012 series of Applied Linguistics seminars at Macquarie University will be held on Tuesday, September 04:

The Sociolinguistics of Identity in Iran

When: Tue 04/09, 1:00-2:00pm; Where: W5C 221

Presenter: Saeed Rezaie, Sharif University of Technology

Abstract: This presentation provides an introduction to the diverse languages, dialects, ethnicities, and cultures of Iran and discusses their place in Iranian language education programs. Then, different definitions of identity are outlined in order to explicate how identity research gradually found its way into applied linguistics research. Afterwards an ethnographic case study in Tehran on an Iranian learning English is reported to observe how his identity was influenced by the Anglo-American language and culture. Finally, a nation-wide in-progress sociolinguistic study is reported to show how Iranian English language learners’ demographic information is related to their linguistic and cultural identity (re)construction. Using Structural Equation Modeling, a model of linguistic-cultural identity in Iran is presented and its components are elaborated. Theoretical and practical significance and implications of the research are put forth and subsequently some under-researched topics are suggested for further research.

Branded kids' products on display in an Iranian store

Recently, I had occasion to visit a toy store in Isfahan to buy a present for my seven-year-old cousin, who had invited me to his birthday party. Grand, impressive and splendid, the store in question offered a variety of products, from children stationeries and toys of different shapes and colours to XBOX games.

My original intention was to buy something of the Dara & Sara brand, an Iranian line of dolls, books and audio materials. Yet, to my surprise, the store had almost no trace of local toys such as these. I left the shop in disappointment hoping to find something more ‘culturally relevant’ in another shop but I failed again. Eventually, I gave up and bought a Ben 10 watch and a Ben 10 backpack as gifts.

The majority of the products in these toy stores had English messages or expressions and were clearly coded as “global” rather than “Iranian.” The prestige, the price and the quality of imported toys have consigned local products to a marginal role such that I, the customer, was just a passive and helpless recipient and left without any choice. Unsurprisingly then, it turned out that I was not the only one without a choice: at the birthday party, I was disappointed to find out that almost all the guests had brought more or less similar presents.

However, there is a further twist to this story: A few days after the birthday party, I met my little cousin again at yet another family gathering. He was wearing one of his birthday presents, a Spiderman t-shirt, which was emblazoned with the slogan “The Amazing Spiderman.”

As members of my extending family were spending time together, the TV was on in the background. The channel was set to one of the Iranian national TV channels and the program that was running was an episode in a crime series featuring the Iranian police, which in Persian is called naja. In one of the scenes a group of naja commandos raided a building and arrested the bad guys.

The word naja was printed in bold letters on the back of their uniforms and my little cousin obviously made a connection between the uniform of these TV heroes and his own T-shirt: he shouted in amazement: “The amazing naja!”

When I had started my quest for a toy that was culturally relevant, I had been disappointed. However, my cousin’s reaction demonstrates that global, cultural symbols are always appropriated locally – often in unexpected ways. The episode throws into question the long-established assumption that linguistic and cultural hegemonies always work in a top-down manner and paves the way for a totally different interpretation: the spread of English and its related cultural products operate in complex and at times contradictory ways. Ultimately, Spiderman t-shirts display their own ‘local’ orders of indexicality.

While the participants and I thus broadly agreed in our interpretation of the slogan, some participants actually rejected the premise of my question that the slogan was in English. They argued that the slogan might look English but was actually Persian because “end” in English doesn’t mean ‘ultimate,’ ‘super’ or ‘great.’ Rather the word has been borrowed into Persian and acquired that meaning there. On consideration, I have to agree: the premise of my question was indeed mistaken, based, as it is, on an assumption of linguistic discreteness. The question of whether the slogan is in English or Persian is ultimately pointless and I fell into the same trap that Bourdieu berates linguists for:

To speak of the language, without further specification, as linguists do, is tacitly to accept the official definition of the official language of a political unit. (Language and Symbolic Power, 1991, p. 45)

I’m grateful to all the workshop participants for that reminder and for the many stimulating discussions we had during the 2^nd Language-on-the-Move Workshop at the University of Isfahan!

Reading 'Culture Shock' in Isfahan

In the past three decades attention has shifted from communicative competence to discourse as a frame for understanding the challenges faced by language learners. Yet, the question of how stereotyping in language teaching can be avoided seems as unresolved as ever. Is it enough to instruct teachers to avoid stereotyping?

This question crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago when I was teaching a reading passage titled ‘Culture Shock’ to a number of EFL learners in Isfahan as part of their obligatory reading syllabus. Originally written in 1998 by a New York writer, the text recounts the experiences of Tamara Blackmore, an Australian exchange student in the USA. The following lines are taken from the passage in question:

In Australia, students and teachers have little contact outside the classroom. It’s a formal and depersonalized relationship. College is a place you go for a few hours every day and then go home. Your social life and school life is separate.

Going to school here [in America] is a lifestyle, whereas at home [in Australia] we’re just a number. We attend school to get a degree so we can graduate, get a job, and . . . .

Another pleasant shocker was the close and open relationships American students enjoy with their teachers. It is a sharp contrast to Australia . . . .

[In America] students go out to dinner with their lecturers . . . . We just don’t do that [in Australia]. (‘Culture Shock’ by B. Weinstein, in Lee & Gundersen, 2000, Select Readings Intermediate, pp. 27f.)

In the first place, one might wonder why learning about ‘culture shock’ has to be part of an EFL curriculum seeing that EFL students mostly study English to use it in their native contexts. Even for ESL students who study English in the USA, reading about the experiences of another English speaker, who by definition does not face the challenges of language learning, seems irrelevant. Transposing the reading from an ESL to an EFL context such as Iran, it becomes an exercise in alienation.

Having read the text, students are required to discuss a series of questions, including this one: “[W]ould you rather study for a year in Australia or the United States?” For my students, the answer was, almost unanimously – and unsurprisingly –, ‘in the United States’! Obviously, the text had not made Australia sound particularly attractive. By contrast, the text is extremely positive about American universities. Indeed, one of my students summed up her interpretation of the text as follows: “Australia means culture shock and I don’t like it!”

As a bit of an Australia-fan, I did my best to turn the tide by sharing my daily experiences in Australia with my students but I failed miserably. For them, a text that bore the stamp of “a New York journalist” was much more reliable than the personal experiences of their teacher! Some even criticized me for having spent time in Australia.

Considering that TESOL and study abroad are two markets where Australia and the USA compete for students and thus market share, it’s hard not to read an ulterior motive into this passage, originating as it does in the USA. In this context, and unbeknownst to them, EFL learners such as the students in my class are turned from learners into an audience for advertising. What does that mean for language pedagogy? And where does it leave me as an EFL teacher if I have to teach to a syllabus with a not-so-hidden agenda?

Sir John Bagot Glubb (1897-1986)

Many people tend to think that multilingual and intercultural communication skills are not only useful skills to have but are also somehow morally superior. Multilingual people who are skilled intercultural communicators are often thought to be more open-minded, tolerant, peaceful and understanding than their monolingual counterparts; in short, better people. However, this idealistic view of multilingualism and intercultural communication is difficult to square with the institutional fact that some of the best language learning and teaching as well as intercultural communication training has historically been happening in the halls of power. Military and secret service training academies in particular have produced some of the finest multilinguals and most skilled intercultural communicators.

I’ve written about this conundrum in my new book Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (and, btw, make sure to join the official launch on August 02), particularly with reference to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) and Edward T. Hall’s work there. As the author of classics such as The Silent Language (1959) and The Hidden Dimension (1966), Hall is widely considered as the intellectual god-father of the field of intercultural communication. That his work was based in the institutional needs and concerns of the FSI is less well known. The FSI grew out of various language training programmes for military personnel during World War II to prepare US diplomats for their missions abroad.

Kingmakers, a collection of the biographies of the British and American men (and a few women) who invented the modern Middle East provides another set of intriguing case studies of the relationship, if any, between language and intercultural communication skills on the one hand and contributing to world peace and global understanding on the other. The authors, Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, call their subjects “kingmakers” because they attempted to influence the course of the Middle East through “indirect rule,” mostly in Her Majesty’s Service. In the late 19th century, “indirect rule” became a much-hyped strategy of semi-colonial administration, which did not involve full-fledged occupation but rather wielding influence through being the power behind an indigenous autocrat. What possibly distinguishes the kingmakers of the early 20^th century, aka “advisers” from the consultants of today is that they were actually accomplished Orientalists, highly proficient in Arabic and that they spent most of their lives in the region. Overall, people such as A. T. Wilson, Gertrude Bell, T. E. Lawrence, H.S.J.B. Philby, John Bagot Glubb or Percy Cox seem to have genuinely felt that by serving Britain they were also acting in the best interests of the people in the region.

The feelings for the region and its people prevalent among this group are expressed well by John Bagot Glubb, also known as Glubb Pasha, the British commander of the Arab Legion, in his autobiography:

I spent thirty-six years living among the Arabs. During the first nineteen of these years, I lived entirely with them, rarely meeting Europeans and sometimes not speaking a word of English for weeks on end. I originally went to Iraq in 1920 as a regular officer of the British Army, seeking fresh fields of adventure and a wider knowledge of the many different forms of modern soldiering. But when I had spent five years among the Arabs, I decided to change the basis of my whole career: I made up my mind to resign my commission in the British Army and devote my life to the Arabs. My decision was largely emotional. I loved them. (quoted in Kingmakers, p. 265).

One of the forms that this “devotion” and “love” took is that he pioneered aerial bombing in Iraq. It’s a long story and the simple version goes something like this: during World War I, the British promised King Faisal’s father, a tribal chief in the Hejaz, a kingdom. After the war, no suitable kingdom was available for various reasons, including conflicting promises made to others. So, eventually, he was installed in the newly-created Iraq, where he had no local base whatsoever and where local tribes felt no need to be loyal to the new king nor to pay taxes to support his regime. The fact that Iraq had only recently been invented (by another set of British advisors, of course) as a nation out of three previous Ottoman provinces didn’t help. So, it was decided to engage in some stark nation-building: the submission of the Beni Huchaim tribes of Southern Iraq to their new nation and imported king was to be achieved through terrorizing them with aerial bombing.

In 1923 what is today Southern Iraq thus became a testing ground for the aerial bombing of civilian populations and in those early days someone needed to map the terrain before any bombing could be undertaken. The only person with the right skill set was Glubb: he had the geographical mapping skills, the military knowledge of operational aspects, and the language and cultural skills to be able to move among the local population. As he notes in his autobiography, on at least two occasions it was the Beni Huchaim tribes’ hospitality that enabled him to make the maps that would enable the RAF to bomb them. In addition to mapping the terrain, he was also “mapping” their social structure by pinpointing those sheiks whose influence among their people would render them particularly “suitable” for attack.

Glubb was not without sympathy for the tribes: he notes their poverty as well as the fact that to them the central government was nothing but “a kind of absentee landlord which never concerns itself with them except periodically to demand revenues” (Glubb, quoted in Kingmakers, p. 268). Given his excellent cultural knowledge, he was also well aware that what he was doing was a serious breach of the norms of Arab hospitality (as a matter of fact, any norms of hospitality it would seem to me). The justification offered by Glubb is that he did not actually in any way betray the Beni Huchaim or lied to them. On the contrary, he says he was candid about his purpose and even warned them “that he, himself, would lead the bombers if they [=the Beni Huchaim] proved recalcitrant” (ibid.). In the end, that’s exactly what happened: Glubb lead the enforcement of government policy to use aerial bombing for non-payment of taxes. He praised the strategy as “extremely efficient” because it demoralized the tribesmen by making them feel helpless and precluding any effective response on their part.

The way I see it, if you warn a people who have never even seen airplanes and who have no idea of what a bomb might be of potential air raids, and if you consider that fair warning, then that obviously demonstrates an extraordinary lack of empathy. Not to mention that aerial bombing is obviously an extraordinarily unjust and cruel way of enforcing tax compliance. So, we are back with our original conundrum: a highly competent linguist and intercultural communicator acting immorally and violating basic principles of trust and interpersonal relationships. However, tying the question of multilingualism and ethics to an individual would be to miss the point in the same way that assumptions of multilinguals as peace makers and better people miss the point.

In the end, multilingualism and intercultural communication don’t exist “per se” outside a particular context. In the context of the imperial make-over of the Middle East during and after World War I, language and culture teaching were a key aspect of the education of an imperial elite, and intercultural communication was nothing more and nothing less than an aspect of establishing and maintaining imperial control.

In this context, where so many people want to leave the country, the private, commercial foreign language sector has been expanding rapidly. Iran in general and my home town, Isfahan, in particular have undergone an unprecedented boom in foreign language learning and teaching. Accordingly, commercial language schools have mushroomed. It has been reported that, besides hundreds of unregistered ones, a whopping 3700 registered language schools are operating across the country.

The phenomenal market growth in commercial language teaching has also increased competition among language institutes and advertising materials for such institutes are a ubiquitous sight. Ranging from broadcast ads, via billboards, to all kinds of brochures and flyers, advertising materials are all designed to persuade even more members of the target group, i.e. Iranian youths, to engage in foreign language learning. In this way, language learning is no longer about education but about consumption and languages become nothing more than consumer commodities.

This typical flyer presents a case in point. I found this flier in Isfahan’s New Jolfa district, one of Isfahan’s hippest areas frequented by “modern” Iranian youths. The New Jolfa area is a gathering spot for fashionable Iranians to hang out. Consequently, it is also an ideal spot for promoting language schools.

In this flyer, the commodification of language learning is inscribed in the very grammar of the advertising text. For instance, ‘courses’ (دوره ها) and ‘classroom teaching’ (کلاس ها) are animated as participants and thus displace human agents such as ‘teachers’ or ‘students.’ That means that the ‘products’ themselves are ascribed roles and attributes that are in educational contexts normally associated with teachers. Modalities such as disappointment, failure, or risk do not even appear; all that is expressed is that ‘customers’ will receive a predictable, stable outcome. As the flyer has it, success is “100 percent guaranteed” (۱۰۰% تضمینی)!

Language learning thus becomes a product consisting of discrete units, which are separately accessible, and can be bought and sold as distinct goods in the range of commodities available in the market. In such commodified educational discourse, it is the duration of the course that takes on a symbolic significance; one can learn, say, Spanish in 90 days     (اسپانیایی ۹۰ روز)!

Apparently, the market is too competitive and the time is too short to check for typos. Infelicities such as “TOFLE” (i.e. TOEFL), “discution” (i.e. discussion), and “crusive” (i.e. cursive) are by no means limited to the flyer under scrutiny.

Last but not least, the use of flags in such a typical flyer perfectly fits its international and future-oriented purposes. These flags seem to have been intended to foster the link between language learning and mobility and hence to increase the marketing hype surrounding foreign language learning. The more language schools are hyped up, the more difficult it is to resist the urge to “buy” the advertised “products.”

In fact, polygamy is not the norm amongst Saudi families. Polygamy is legal in Saudi Arabia, and when it has happened to a student or to someone in one of their families, the students are generally openly upset about it. They describe their anger at their fathers and how they must take care of their depressed mothers and siblings in classroom discussions, and in their writing. Divorce and polygamy seem to cause equal amounts of distress, and while polygamy is socially understood, it is rarely comfortably accepted. Some students have said their families have been totally split apart, and describe what I would, from a Western point of view, consider permanently separated marital status. In these situations, the father doesn’t divorce the first wife – he just lives with the new wife. He may or may not financially support the first wife and his children, and the emotional support has definitely dwindled. This obviously causes a strained relationship with the children, who try to look after their hurting mothers, and thus they often struggle to keep up with their studies. By contrast, I have only seen a few cases where the children are openly OK with the reality of a polygamous father. This is usually the case when the mother is mentally stable and has family support, and the financial support continues to come from the father.

The reality of polygamy is usually something as in the following story, told to me by a student, whose father – in his 60s – decided to marry a young girl from Egypt. The arrangement was made when he simply flew to Egypt, went to a village and paid an acceptable dowry to secure a marriage with a local girl. He came back to Saudi Arabia and to his first wife and children announcing he had remarried and introducing them to his new wife. Needless to say this didn’t go over as well as he had hoped and soon after he moved into an apartment with his new wife. A few years passed and all his children were furious with him and they were all suffering financially as he could not afford to take care of two households much less be there for them emotionally. He had two young children with his new Egyptian wife and was struggling to make ends meet. Soon after the birth of the second child by the Egyptian 2nd wife, she decided to go back to Egypt to visit her family. However, she never returned and the father was left alone with young children to take care of. He begged his first wife to take him back and care for these children who had been abandoned by their mother. While the first wife didn’t take the husband back, she decided she would raise the two kids as her own. My student was not happy with the situation, as she hadn’t been able to go to college due to lack of funds until she obtained a scholarship. She had never forgiven her father and felt ridiculed by her extended family. Furthermore, her father’s polygamy would also impact her chances of getting married negatively. Polygamy is thus a class phenomenon: in a rich family the second marriage might have been more socially acceptable and the impact less painful.

The complexities of polygamy and the hurt it causes Saudi women escape the stereotypes and asking Saudi women how they can live with polygamy is adding insult to injury. As an ESL teacher in Saudi Arabia, I myself have also had to learn to not judge Saudi women and consider the situations in which they find themselves. As an Iranian-American, married to a Saudi myself, I didn’t think it would be too hard to understand and accept the issues that Saudi women face. Getting over stereotypes was thus not a challenge for me as a teacher because I already knew that commonly held stereotypes involve complicated truths. However, questioning students and cultivating critical thinking around social topics has certainly been a challenge. One method has been the development of student ESL blogs, which center round my own, Philosophy Café. The blogs cover student-selected topics such as polygamy but also Islamophobia, co-education, and working women in Saudi Arabia. This provides students with an opportunity to speak out about their concerns while practising their English writing and gives them a chance to explain what they feel needs explaining. Saudi women’s own voices are making a dent in the wall of stereotypes they are facing.