Standing at odds with some of the axioms of modern linguistic theory in its structural iteration, language ideology enables us to situate language in its socio-political context. Taking Arabic as an example, the lecture will explore the different meanings of language ideology, identify some of its types, specify some of the major sites from which it can be culled and set out some of the principles that guide this enterprise. The lecture will also investigate how this ideology relates to Arabic language anxiety as an emerging trope of Arabic language culture. Making a distinction between language anxiety and language fear, the lecture proposes a link to language policy from both a theoretical and practical perspective. The lecture will link fear to corpus-planning and anxiety to status planning as two overarching concepts in language policy.
Thu 19 May 2016 | 16:00–19:00
Language Ideology: Arabic, the Arabs and Language Anxiety
Yasir Suleiman (University of Cambridge/Doha Institute for Graduate Studies), Chair: Islam Dayeh (Freie Universität Berlin)
Freie Universität Berlin, Holzlaube, Raum 2.2051, Fabeckstr. 23-25, 14193 Berlin
Yasir Suleiman is His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa'id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. He is also acting president of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. His research covers the cultural politics of the Middle East with special focus on identity, conflict, diaspora studies and modernization in so far as these issues relate to language, modern Arabic literature, translation and memory. He also conducts research in Arabic grammatical theory and the Arabic intellectual tradition in the pre-modern period. His publications include Arabic in the Fray: Language Ideology and Cultural Politics, Edinburgh University Press, 2013, Arabic, Self and Identity: A Study in Conflict and Displacement, Oxford University Press, 2011 and The Arabic Grammatical Tradition: A Study in Ta'lil, Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
