Professional and cultural identity performances in transnational, middle-class migrants: A sociolinguistic case study of the United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT

Previous studies on English language users in the United Arab Emirates have largely focused on the local, native populations in higher education and its K-12 school environments. While significant and necessary, a large piece of the puzzle, a focus on UAE’s burgeoning and transient, professional, multilingual, middle-class, expatriate population, has been overlooked, most likely due to issues of access. The current study addresses this research gap by investigating the professional identities, language use, and cultural selves of a segment of the middle-class migrant population. Drawing on survey data, the paper argues that due to their transient and impermanent status in the UAE, this population has a higher propensity towards transnationalism which in turn heightens their cultural, linguistic, transcultural, and translinguistic flows and ways of being. In addition, this study calls for further and continued investigations of migrant populations to widen our understanding of the ever-changing sociolinguistic complexities of the UAE.

KEYWORDS:

• United Arab Emirates; middle-class migrants; language use; transnational; cultural and linguistic flows

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants, 10.

2 Kennetz and Carroll, “Language Threat”; O’Neill, “Multilingualism and Occluded Diversities.”

3 Hopkyns, Impact of Global English; Hopkyns, Zoghbor, and Hassall, “The Use of English”; van den Hoven and Carroll, “Emirati pre-service teachers’ perspectives.”

4 Statistics Center - Abu Dhabi, “Statistical yearbook of Abu Dhabi,” 94.

5 “Dubai starts issuing permanent residency."

6 Khondker, “Glocal Identities in the Gulf,” 129.

7 Vora, “Producing Diasporas.”

8 Ali, “Going and Coming,” 554.

9 My unease with the term is perhaps due to its outdatedness. On the surface, the term “developing countries” draws attention to an economic classification of entire political entities forcing the reader to cast or reduce the participants-in-question to such an economic characteristic. On a deeper level, the term, akin to “Third World” is reflective of a colonial and hegemonic epistemology: “The use of the term Western is by no means innocuous. The creation of the West as a thought category is linked to colonial history and to the determination of an Other, the East, or, more recently, the Third World.” (Le Renard, Western Privilege, 3, original emphasis).

10 Ali, “Going and Coming,” 565–566.

11 Vora, “Producing Diasporas,” 385.

12 Le Renard, Western Privilege, 2.

13 Ibid., 6 (my emphasis).

14 Vora, “Producing Diasporas,” 384.

15 Ibid., 385.

16 Wardhaugh and Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 118.

17 Zogby, “Shedding light,” 32.

18 Alshafiei, “Contemporary Middle-Class Dwellings,” 7–8.

19 Alawadi, Khanal, and Almulla, “Land, Urban Form, and Politics,” 120.

20 Ali, “Going and Coming,” 561.

21 Wardhaugh and Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 281.

22 Ibid., (my emphasis).

23 Ali, “Going and Coming,” 557.

24 Appadurai, Modernity At Large, 4.

25 Ibid.

26 Pennycook, Global Englishes, 6.

27 Ibid., 8.

28 Singh, Transcultural Voices, 16.

29 Ibid., 12.

30 See Al Hussein and Gitsaki, “Foreign Language Learning Policy”; Al-Issa, “English as a Medium”; Al-Issa and Dahan, “Global English and Endangered Arabic”; Karmani, “Petro-Linguistics”; and Solloway, “English in the United Arab Emirates.”

31 Kachru, The Indianization of English; Kachru, The Alchemy of English; Kachru, “Standards, Codification, and Sociolinguistic.”

32 Canagarajah, Translingual Practices and Neoliberal; Dovchin, “The Ordinariness of Youth”; Dovchin, Sultana, and Pennycook, “Relocalizing the Translingual Practices”; and Lee, The Politics of Translingualism.

33 Jenks and Lee, “Translanguaging and World Englishes,” 219.

34 Dovchin, “Translingual English,” 57.

35 Kachru, “Standards, Codification, and Sociolinguistic Realism,” 12.

36 Kachru, The Indianization of English.

37 Alshafiei, “Contemporary Middle-Class Dwellings,” 7–8.

38 Sridhar, “Societal Multilingualism,” 50.

39 Since racial categorization (white vs. non-white persons) and social stratification is inherent in the UAE, the phrase “American or British person” to represent race, although not accurate, was chosen in light of the epistemological demographic perception within the UAE and is typically used to politely/euphemistically refer to a white/Caucasian person from the USA and the UK or England. Le Renard notes these in her study as well (see notes 12, and 13).

40 Khondker, “Glocal Identities in the Gulf,” 129 (my emphasis).

41 Al-Issa and Dahan, “Global English and Endangered Arabic”; Karmani, “Petro-Linguistics”; and Solloway, “English in the United.”

42 Ali, “Going and Coming.”

43 Fasold, “Politics of Language,” 415.

44 Ibid.

45 Wardhaugh and Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 28.

46 As listed on the University College London’s “A Taste of Languages at School (ATLAS)” website, 24 October 2023.

47 Vora, Impossible Citizens, 76.

48 Kennetz and Carroll, “Language Threat.”

49 Bolander and Sultana, “Ordinary English Among Muslim Communities”; Dovchin, “The Ordinariness of Youth”; and Lee and Dovchin, Translinguistics.

50 Ali, “Going and Coming,” 560; Vora, “Producing Diasporas,” 385.

51 Kapur, “UAE retirement age.”

52 Kachru and Nelson, World Englishes in Asian Contexts, 31.

53 Fussell, “The local flavor”; Siemund, Al-Issa, and Leimgruber, “Multilingualism.”

54 Vora “Producing Diasporas,” 382–383.

55 Bhabha, The Location of Culture.

56 See note 25 above.

57 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 38.

58 Ibid., 34 (original emphasis).

59 Pennycook, Global Englishes, 8.

60 Wardhaugh and Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 213.

61 See note 43 above. Also see notes 41 and 42 for context.

62 Jenks, “Family Language Policy,” 315.

63 Ibid., 314.

64 O’Neill, “Multilingualism and Occluded Diversities.”

65 Khondker, “Glocal Identities in the Gulf.”

66 Ibid., 140.

67 Ibid., 129.

68 Ibid., 135.

69 See note 48 above.

70 See notes 2, 3, 30, and 41 above.

Additional information

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Suneeta Thomas

Suneeta Thomas is Coordinator of TESOL Programs and Associate Professor of English - TESOL/Linguistics at Missouri State University, USA, where she regularly teaches a myriad range of graduate and undergraduate-level courses in Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, and Grammar. As a sociocultural linguist with research interests in World Englishes, she investigates patterns in English language use and its users in transnational Middle Eastern, South-Asian, and East-Asian contexts and assesses how these patterns are influenced by multiple social, cultural, economic, racial, and political forces. Currently, she researches migrant/foreign/immigrant identities both in the Middle East and the USA. Her secondary area of research lies in unpacking and addressing the challenges L2 writers face in the classroom. Her publications appear in Critical Insights: Amy Tan, World Englishes, Journal of Contemporary Philology, Educational Technology & Society, and TESOL’s SLW News.