The present and future status of a minority language: The case of Arabic in the United States

Abstract

The author examines the use of Arabic in the United States in four institutional resources: periodic press, places of worship, ethnic community schools and the electronic media (radio and television) in the 1980's. The current status of Arabic is compared with the early period (1890's‐1930's) among Arabic‐speaking immigrants to the United States. During this early period the size of the ethnic community, the social power associated with English toward Americanisation and assimilation are major factors which caused the shift from Arabic to English. The situation of Arabic in the United States in the 1980's is likely to follow, in the author's view, the pattern experienced by early Arabic‐speaking immigrants where Arabic might eventually diminish as a communicative tool.

The argument in this article supports Fishman's notion that the language of the speech community controlling the means of production (English) eventually displaces the language of the speech community with productive manpower (Arabic). Ethnicity, therefore, can exist side by side without maintaining an ethnic language.

Notes

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco, 1984. The research reported here draws on data collected by the author and Joshua A. Fishman, whose influence is pervasive throughout this paper. Thanks are due to the respondents to our questionnaire who made this paper possible. I also thank Dan Ehnbom and Virginia Palmer for stylistic suggestions.