Language and Identity in the Arab World explores the inextricable link between language and identity, referring particularly to the Arab world. Spanning Indonesia to the United States, the Arab world is here imagined as a continually changing one, with the Arab diaspora asserting its linguistic identity across the world. Crucial questions on transforming linguistic landscapes, the role and implications of migration, and the impact of technology on language use are explored by established and emerging scholars in the field of applied and socio-linguistics. The book asks such crucial questions as how language contact affects or transforms identity, how language reflects changing identities among migrant communities, and how language choices contribute to identity construction in social media. As well as appreciating the breadth and scope of the Arab world, this anthology focuses on the transformative role of language within indigenous and migrant communities as they negotiate between their heritage languages and those spoken by the wider society. Investigating the ways in which identity continues to be imagined and re-constructed in and among Arab communities, this book is indispensable to students, teachers, and anyone who is interested in language contact, linguistic landscapes, and minority language retention as well as the intersections of language and technology.

Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East differs from traditional modern Middle East scholarship in that it reevaluates the images and perceptions that specialists-and Middle Easterners themselves-have normalized and intellectualized about the region, often with a patronizing rejection of the legitimacy and authenticity of non-Arab Middle Eastern peoples, and a refusal to attribute the Middle East's pathologies to causes outside the traditional Arab-Israeli and post-colonial paradigms.

This volume contains selected chapters from researchers and scholars concerning global English in the Arab world. It brings a new perspective to the phenomenon of global English as today's lingua franca by focusing on an area of the world that is troubled by the spread of English. The book goes to the heart of a linguistic dilemma: the impact of global English on the Arabic language, Arab culture, and identity. New empirical evidence and insights into this problem are presented by a variety of researchers. The majority raise concerns about the long-term viability of Modern Standard Arabic in the face of global English. In light of the ever-expanding growth of global English, this book gives voice to the worries of people in the Arab world about maintaining their language, culture, and identity.

Suleiman's book considers national identity in relation to language, the way in which language can be manipulated to signal political, cultural or historical difference. As a language with a long-recorded heritage and one spoken by the majority of those in the Middle East in various dialects, Arabic is a particularly appropriate vehicle for such an investigation. It is also a penetrating device for exploring the conflicts of the Middle East.'This is a well-crafted, well organized, and eloquent book. 'Karin Ryding, Georgetown University

In Arabic in Israel, the interplay of language and identity in conflict situations is examined.

The Routledge Handbook of Arabic and Identity offers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of studies that relate the Arabic language in its entirety to identity. This handbook offers new trajectories in understanding language and identity more generally and Arabic and identity in particular. Split into three parts, covering ‘Identity and Variation’, ‘Identity and Politics’ and ‘Identity Globalisation and Diversity’, it is the first of its kind to offer such a perspective on identity, linking the social world to identity construction and including issues pertaining to our current political and social context, including Arabic in the diaspora, Arabic as a minority language, pidgin and creoles, Arabic in the global age, Arabic and new media, Arabic and political discourse. Scholars and students will find essential theories and methods that relate language to identity in this handbook. It is particularly of interest to scholars and students whose work is related to the Arab world, political science, modern political thought, Islam and social sciences including: general linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology, literature media studies and Islamic studies.

The question of identity in relation to language has hardly been dealt with in the Middle East and North Africa, in spite of the centrality of these issues to a variety of scholarly debates concerning this strategically important part of the world. The book seeks to cover a variety of themes in this area.