Living Language Policy Through Stratified Space: A Linguistic Ethnography in the United Arab Emirates

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dc.contributor.advisorHaque, Eve
dc.contributor.authorCook, William Robert Amilan
dc.date.accessioned2020-08-11T12:50:34Z
dc.date.available2020-08-11T12:50:34Z
dc.date.copyright2020-05
dc.date.issued2020-08-11
dc.date.updated2020-08-11T12:50:34Z
dc.degree.disciplineLinguistics and Applied Linguistics (Applied Linguistics)
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis project explores the lived language policy experiences of a group of foreign residents (noncitizens with fixed-term visas) who live in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in the United Arab Emirates. The primary set of participants are staff and students recruited from a private language school in the city but the project expands well beyond the school premises, following these individuals as they make their way through the complex policies and interactions that shape their everyday lives. As a critical ethnographic project, it draws on a range of empirical data including: monthly interviews with primary informants; single interviews with other residents of the city; observations of city spaces discussed in these interviews; national and institutional policy documents; physical documents for city spaces; and media reports and commentary. It also uses a broad set of theoretical tools to analyse this data, such as: Foucaults (1988; 2007; 2008) discussions of neoliberalism, governmentality and technologies of the self; sociospatial conceptualizations of scale; and conviviality. This analysis focuses on how subjectivities are produced or claimed within language policy apparatuses as well as how city space is constructed in ethnolinguistic terms. The project offers a discussion of language policy and practice from the perspectives of the under-researched foreign resident population of the UAE. These perspectives allowed for a rich picture of the ethnolinguistic and socioeconomic boundaries that define everyday interactions in Ras Al Khaimah and the country as a whole. The project also demonstrates the importance of sites of such as Ras Al Khaimah for language policy research. In this space of both high mobility and structured immobility, individuals from all over the world find themselves in regular contact with one another while at the same time often being spatially segregated along lines of race, class and/or gender. This is a city in which the flows of global capitalism are made visible and their implications for language policy can be explored.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/37756
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectSociolinguistics
dc.subject.keywordslanguage policy
dc.subject.keywordsUnited Arab Emirates
dc.subject.keywordsmultilingualism
dc.subject.keywordsethnography
dc.subject.keywordsLPP
dc.subject.keywordslanguage policy and planning
dc.subject.keywordscritical language policy
dc.subject.keywordscritical policy
dc.subject.keywordslanguage learning
dc.subject.keywordslanguage education
dc.subject.keywordsde facto policy linguistic anthropology
dc.subject.keywordslinguistic ethnography
dc.subject.keywordsethnography of language policy
dc.subject.keywordscritical ethnography
dc.subject.keywordsnarrative
dc.subject.keywordsnarrative inquiry
dc.subject.keywordsneoliberalism
dc.subject.keywordsgovernmentality
dc.subject.keywordstechnologies of the self
dc.subject.keywordssubjectivity
dc.subject.keywordsFoucault
dc.subject.keywordsconviviality
dc.subject.keywordsspace
dc.subject.keywordsscale
dc.subject.keywordsagency
dc.subject.keywordscontact zones
dc.subject.keywordsrace
dc.subject.keywordsracism
dc.subject.keywordsmigration
dc.subject.keywordsmigrant workers
dc.subject.keywordsmobility
dc.subject.keywordsexpatriates
dc.subject.keywordsexpats
dc.subject.keywordsforeign workers
dc.subject.keywordsRas Al Khaimah
dc.subject.keywordsUAE
dc.subject.keywordsRAK
dc.subject.keywordsArabic
dc.subject.keywordsEnglish
dc.subject.keywordsHindi
dc.subject.keywordsUrdu
dc.subject.keywordsMalayalam
dc.subject.keywordsTagalog.
dc.titleLiving Language Policy Through Stratified Space: A Linguistic Ethnography in the United Arab Emirates
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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