Figure 1: Transitional “Hayakom at HBKU” sign marking HBKU’s presence in the TAMUQ building (picture taken by authors)

Walking into the Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) building today feels different from just a year ago. As part of an ongoing project, several students and I (Sara) have been documenting the visual and linguistic changes taking place across the TAMUQ building in Education City, Qatar. The university’s traditional greeting Howdy, its maroon banners, and the familiar Aggie insignia (the shared nickname and identity of Texas A&M students and alumni) are still visible, yet they are beginning to lose their dominance. In their place, visitors are now welcomed by new blue-and-white signs displaying a translingual message: “Hayakom at HBKU.” The Gulf Arabic word hayakom, meaning “welcome,” has become increasingly prominent on posters, banners, and orientation booths. Although much of this signage is not yet permanently installed, the shift is already evident.

This evolving dynamic from Howdy to Hayakom reflects more than just a sudden change in branding. It marks a shift in Qatar’s higher education landscape, as the U.S. branch campus TAMUQ, part of Qatar Foundation (QF) and located in Education City, prepares to close in 2028 while its fellow QF institution, the homegrown Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), gradually assumes its facilities and students. The closure decision followed a surprise February 2024 vote by the Board of Regents of Texas A&M University’s main campus in College Station, Texas, which cited regional instability and a renewed focus on its U.S. mission. Soon after that announcement, the three of us began photographing every Texas A&M emblem, sign, and display in the building, creating a record to track the changes over time and to preserve a piece of the campus’s history. Over the past year, we have watched the visual culture of the space shift in real time. Through signage, slogans, and colors, the linguistic landscape of the building and the identities it projects tell a story of institutional transformation, cultural localization, and shifting ideologies of belonging.

The educationscape as a site of change

Scholars of linguistic landscapes often remind us that signs do more than convey information; they materialize power, ideology, identity, and values in public space (Ahmad, 2022; Hillman & Ahmad, 2024). The same can be said for educationscapes, where universities use visuals, language, and architecture to communicate identities, values and affiliations (Krompák et al., 2022).

Figure 2:  Howdy signage inside the TAMUQ building representing Aggie identity and transnational continuity (picture taken by authors)

At TAMUQ, Howdy has reigned supreme for more than twenty years. As the official greeting of Texas A&M, faculty, staff, and students at the main campus use it to welcome one another and to greet campus visitors as a sign of Aggie hospitality. On the Doha campus, Howdy appears in signage, emails, and posters for Student Affairs events such as “Howdy Week.” Its cheerful informality reinforced continuity between College Station and its branch campus thousands of miles away.

Now, however, Howdy coexists with Hayakom. HBKU has introduced its own greeting, one that foregrounds the local linguistic and cultural context. HBKU Student Affairs has also begun cultivating its own traditions: “Hayakom Tuesday,” echoing TAMUQ’s “Howdy Week,” and “Blue Thursday,” where students are encouraged to “wear blue, show blue, scream blue!”—a parallel to TAMUQ’s maroon-and-white Spirit Thursdays where Aggies are encouraged to “embrace the maroon and white.”

This bilingual, bicultural overlap reflects the liminal moment both institutions currently inhabit. TAMUQ has not yet closed, and many of its students and faculty still identify strongly with Aggie traditions. At the same time, HBKU is asserting itself through new rituals, slogans, and events.

From maroon to blue: Rebranding space and identity

Alongside slogans, colors play an equally prominent role in communicating institutional belonging. TAMUQ’s maroon and white palette linked it visually to its U.S. home campus, reinforcing transnational identity and Aggie pride. Walking through the corridors meant walking through a transplanted Texas brandscape, complete with photos of College Station landmarks.

Figures 3a and 3b: HBKU “Blue Thursday” and TAMUQ “Spirit Thursday” posters on Instagram (screenshots taken by authors)

Today, that palette is fading. Blue and white, the colors of HBKU, now dominate new signage, orientation banners, and student activities. Cushions in the front entrance lobby now feature HBKU’s blue and white geometric logo, and the hallways are lined with images of the Minaretein building (meaning two minarets), HBKU’s signature architectural complex that includes both a mosque and academic colleges, replacing many of the Texas-centric visuals that once dominated the space.

The color shift is more than aesthetic. It signals a deliberate rebranding that seeks to reshape not only institutional identity but also the sense of belonging for students, faculty, and visitors.

Signs of state and leadership

The changes are also visible in the presence of Qatar’s leadership. At the building’s entrance, portraits of the Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and his father, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, now hang prominently. Such state imagery was absent during the TAMUQ era, when visual emphasis rested on Aggie traditions and the global prestige of Texas A&M. Their presence today highlights HBKU’s identity as QF’s homegrown university and its role in advancing national priorities. The walls themselves remind visitors that HBKU is a Qatari institution, rooted in the state’s vision for education and innovation.

Bilingualism and the Arabic language protection law

Another notable change is that TAMUQ operated under a cross-border partnership agreement with QF and was not required to maintain bilingual signage. As a result, its displays were often inconsistent, with some appearing only in English and others in both English and Arabic. However, HBKU complies more with Qatar’s 2019 Arabic Language Protection Law (Law No. 7 of 2019 on the Protection of the Arabic Language). This law requires Arabic to be the primary language on all public signage.

In practice, this means HBKU’s official signage is almost always bilingual, with Arabic typically placed above or beside the English text. This layout gives prominence to Arabic while reflecting HBKU’s use of English as its official medium of instruction and as a shared language among its diverse student body

Figure 4: Portraits of Qatar’s leadership, including the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (left) and the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (right), now displayed at the building’s entrance (picture taken by authors)

The difference is visible, for example, in faculty office nameplates. At TAMUQ, they appeared only in English, whereas at HBKU they are consistently bilingual, with Arabic displayed first. This small but significant shift reflects how language policy is made material in the everyday visual culture of the university.

Belonging and identity in flux

What does it mean for students, faculty, and staff to inhabit this shifting educationscape? This is a question we are currently exploring in our ongoing research about the transition from TAMUQ to HBKU. For Aggies, watching maroon and Howdy fade from view may bring a sense of sadness, as if traditions and ties to the wider Aggie network are slowly being eroded. For new students entering through HBKU, however, Hayakom and the visible presence of Qatari leadership may foster a sense of national belonging and legitimacy that TAMUQ, as a foreign branch campus, could perhaps not fully provide.

The transition also brings into focus broader debates about language, identity, and higher education in Qatar. For years, international branch campuses have stood as symbols of global mobility and English-medium internationalization. HBKU, by contrast, is an explicitly Qatari project, though still English-medium. Its bilingual signage acknowledges the centrality of Arabic in public life while retaining English as the dominant academic language. In this sense, the visual and linguistic rebranding of the building does more than mark institutional change; it materializes Qatar’s ongoing negotiation between global aspiration and national affirmation.

From global brand to national–international project

The TAMUQ-to-HBKU shift can be read as part of a wider trend. Around the world, branch campuses have been praised for providing global exposure but also critiqued for being costly, unsustainable, or disconnected from local needs (Bollag, 2024; Kim, 2025). By 2028, TAMUQ will join the growing list of international branch campuses that have either closed or been absorbed into national institutions. Yet this trajectory is not universal. In the Gulf and parts of Asia, other branch campuses continue to expand, supported by government funding and demand for global higher education pathways.

Figures 5a and 5b: TAMUQ English-only office nameplate and HBKU bilingual Arabic–English office nameplate (photos taken by authors)

In this case, the closure decision was not driven by Qatar’s plans but rather by political currents in the United States, where heightened scrutiny of foreign funding and a turn toward isolationism have reshaped attitudes toward international partnerships. Although HBKU is QF’s homegrown university, it was intentionally designed to be both nationally grounded and internationally oriented—an English-medium institution that continues to attract global faculty and students while advancing Qatar’s local educational priorities. The move from Howdy to Hayakom thus signals more than a greeting. It marks a broader shift from borrowed traditions to localized yet globally connected narratives of identity and belonging.

Reading the signs

As universities, like cities, are built through language and signs, paying attention to the educationscape reveals the symbolic and material contours of change. At TAMUQ/HBKU, the coexistence of Howdy and Hayakom, maroon and blue, photos of Aggie landmarks and Minaretein, encapsulates a moment of transition.

These signs remind us that institutional change is not only about policy or governance. It is lived and seen in everyday spaces: on banners, cushions, doorways, and Instagram posts. They invite us to consider how language, color, and imagery make and remake belonging in higher education. For now, both greetings echo in the same hallways. Yet with each new sign and slogan, the balance tilts, signaling which voice will carry forward for now.

References

Ahmad, R. (2022, October 11). Mal Lawwal: Linguistic landscapes of Qatar [Blog post]. Language on the Move. Mal Lawwal: Linguistic landscapes of Qatar – Language on the Move
Bollag, B. (2024, December 31). International branch campuses spread in Mideast amid concerns about costs, impact. Al-Fanar Media. https://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2024/12/international-branch-campuses-spread-in-mideast-amid-concerns-about-costs-impact/
Hillman, S., & Ahmad, R. (2025). Combatting Islamophobia: English in the linguistic landscape of FIFA World Cup 2022. In K. Gallagher (Ed.), World Englishes in the Arab Gulf States. Routledge.
Kim, K. (2025, July 4). Branch campuses and the mirage of demand. SRHE Blog. https://srheblog.com/2025/07/04/branch-campuses-and-the-mirage-of-demand/
Krompák, E., Fernández-Mallat, V., & Meyer, S. (2022). The symbolic value of educationscapes—Expanding the intersection between linguistic landscape and education. In E. Krompák, V. Fernández-Mallat, & S. Meyer (Eds.), Linguistic Landscapes and Educational Spaces (pp. 1–27). Multilingual Matters.
Law No. (7) of 2019 on the Protection of the Arabic Language. (2019). Al Meezan, Qatar Legal Portal. https://www.almeezan.qa/EnglishLaws/Law%20No.%20(7)%20of%202019%20on%20Protection%20of%20the%20Arabic%20Language.pdf

Author bios

Dr. Sara Hillman is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and English at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). Prior to joining HBKU, she spent nearly a decade at Texas A&M University at Qatar. Her research spans emotions, identity, and (un)belonging in English-medium instruction (EMI) and transnational higher education, World Englishes and sociolinguistics, linguistically and culturally responsive teaching and learning, and language and intercultural communication. Her current research explores the visual signage and symbols of Qatar Foundation’s international branch campuses and the homegrown Hamad Bin Khalifa University and how they project identity, values, and belonging.

Aishwaryaa Kannan is a third-year Electrical and Computer Engineering student at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ). Alongside her studies, she has been deeply engaged in student leadership and research, serving as the Founding President of the Management & Marketing Association and as a student research partner on the campus closure study led by Dr. Sara Hillman. Having experienced the TAMUQ-to-HBKU transition firsthand, she connects personally with the paper’s themes of identity and belonging. Her interests span technology, education, and human connection, and she is passionate about how innovation and culture shape everyday experiences on campus.

Tim Billy Tizon is a third year Electrical and Computer Engineering undergraduate student at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ). In addition to his studies, he has been actively involved in campus life through student leadership and research. He served as Secretary of the Leadership Experience Club for two years and is currently a member of the Management and Marketing Association. He has also participated in research across several disciplines, including communications and machine learning.

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Sara Hillman, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and English at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University about Qatar’s multilingual ecology and its linguistic landscape. The focus is on the emergence of Chinese in Qatar amidst the interaction of multiple languages.

The conversation delves into the socio-political background that contextualizes the visibility of Chinese in Qatari public spaces and education. Sara explains the impact of diplomatic relations and economic interactions that impact cultural exchange and accompanying language use. She also tells us about the use of other languages in intercultural communication.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Reference

Panda (Image credit: J. Patrick Fischer, Wikipedia)

Hillman, S., & Zhao, J. (2025). ‘Panda diplomacy’ and the subtle rise of a Chinese language ecology in Qatar. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 46(1), 45-65.

Transcript (coming soon)

The conversation delves into the use of Arabic in both Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic-speaking contexts for different purposes. Rizwan explains how variations in grammar, font, and script combined with the distinct social contexts of different countries produces distinctive meanings in relation to culture and identity.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Related content

Ahmad, R. (2011). Urdu in Devanagari: Shifting orthographic practices and Muslim identity in Delhi. Language in Society, 40(3), 259-284. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404511000182
Ahmad, R. (2015). Polyphony of Urdu in Post-colonial North India. Modern Asian Studies, 49(3), 678-710. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X13000425
Ahmad, R. (2018). Renaming India: Saffronisation of public spaces. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/10/12/renaming-india-saffronisation-of-public-spaces
Ahmad, R. (2019). Everyone has got it wrong in the Ramadan-Ramzan debate. And no, it’s not about Wahhabism. The Print. https://theprint.in/opinion/everyone-has-got-it-wrong-in-the-ramadan-ramzan-debate-and-no-its-not-about-wahhabism/232558/
Ahmad, R. (2020). “I regret having named him Sahil”: Urdu names in India. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/i-regret-having-named-him-sahil-urdu-names-in-india/
Ahmad, R. (2020). Multilingual resources key to fighting COVID-19. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/multilingual-resources-key-to-fighting-covid-19/
Ahmad, R. (2022). Mal Lawwal: Linguistic landscapes of Qatar. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/mal-lawwal-linguistic-landscapes-of-qatar/
Ahmad, R., & Hillman, S. (2021). Laboring to communicate: Use of migrant languages in COVID-19 awareness campaign in Qatar. Multilingua, 40(3), 303-338. https://doi.org/doi:10.1515/multi-2020-0119
Akhmedova, M., & Ahmad, R. (2024). Why Are Uzbek Youth Learning Arabic? Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/why-are-uzbek-youth-learning-arabic/
Khan, Y. S., & Ahmad, R. (2024). Sacred font, profane purpose. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/sacred-font-profane-purpose/

Transcript (coming soon)

The 99 names of Allah, in a Doha Mall, 2018 (Image Credit: Ingrid Piller)

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.

***
Rizwan Ahmad and Shaikha Al-Hemaidi
***

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.