The status of English in Dubai

M I C K R A N DA L L and M O H A M M A D A M I R S A M I M I

A transition from Arabic to English as a lingua franca

Introduction
significant communities in the Emirate. The
The developing economies of the Gulf states local spoken Arabic in the UAE contains many
have relied heavily on expatriate labor at all borrowings from these languages and there are
levels to support the spectacular development communities which traditionally speak vari-
which has taken place over the last 50 years; so eties of Arabic which attest to the contact with
much so, that in most of the Emirates expatri- these other language groups. However, until
ates outnumber locals. Nowhere is this more the recent expansion of the economy and the
true than in the UAE, and in Dubai in particu- influx of many different nationalities and lan-
lar. This situation has had fundamental socio- guages, in general, the lingua franca of the
linguistic implications, one of which is the country was Arabic.
emergence of English as a lingua franca at all Official figures are not available, but a recent
levels of the society. As is the case in Singapore, estimate puts the number of languages spoken
where English has replaced Malay as the lingua in the UAE as 100 by 200 nationalities and 150
franca over the last 50 years, English in Dubai ethnic groups (The National, 22 March 2009).
is replacing Arabic. This paper discusses this Of these, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi and Malay-
situation in general and looks in particular at alam are probably the most used amongst the
the language needs and attitudes towards Eng- resident population. However, whilst the tradi-
lish amongst government employees in the tional trading practices of Dubai led to the evo-
police force. It uses data collected as part of a lution of language varieties such as the pidgin
needs analysis survey which was conducted to of Arabic and Farsi still spoken in parts of the
determine the learners’ needs, expectations, Musandam peninsula, the development of the
aspirations, and feelings towards English lan- retail industry and medical services which
guage learning which can illuminate its role as employs large numbers of SE Asians such as
a lingua franca in the UAE. The data was col- Filipinos has led to a different linguistic imper-
lected from regular commissioned and non- ative. The movement in a country like Singa-
commissioned police officers and cadets pore from ‘Bazaar Malay’ in the 1950s to
enrolled in courses in Dubai Police Academy as English as the lingua franca of today (Kaplan &
well as on-duty police officers from various Baldauf, 2003) can probably be attributed to
police departments, divisions, and sections in the need to use English in international com-
Dubai. The data is discussed in relation to merce and as a ‘neutral’ choice for communica-
wider socio-linguistic issues within the UAE. tion between the 3 major ethnic groups
(Chinese, Malays, and Tamils). However, the
situation currently in Dubai is that English is
Language issues in Dubai and the
required for a much greater range of social
UAE
interactions, from shopping to receiving med-
Although the recent exponential expansion of ical attention. Although the situation is com-
trade in Dubai has been spectacular, Dubai has plex (more practical occupations, such as
a long history as a trading port. It has always electricians and carpenters, still use more Ara-
acted as a trading centre for the region, with bic as a lingua franca; and ELF is probably
contacts with Iran, Pakistan and India, Traders more used in business circles), the necessity of
from these countries have always had small but English as a means of communication in daily

doi:10.1017/S0266078409990617
English Today 101, Vol. 26, No. 1 (March 2010). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2010 Cambridge University Press 43
life makes Dubai a highly pertinent site for the in English between non-native English speak-
study of ELF. For example, there can be few ers has attracted most attention. The use of
societies in the world where a second language English within the policing of a multi-cultural
is necessary to carry out basic shopping tasks, society such as Dubai provides a different per-
from buying food in supermarkets to clothes in spective on the issue.
shopping malls. In addition to the demands of commerce,
As part of a study such as this, the pragmat- and, in Dubai, daily life, educational policies
ics of the routine administration of society by can also play a role in the spread of English as
the police force is a particularly interesting a lingua franca. In Singapore, the establish-
issue. Policing necessitates the use of English ment of an English medium education system
to communicate from the lowest non-commis- after independence clearly had an influence on
sioned officer on the beat to the staff in immi- the use of English in society. In the UAE, the
gration offices. Much of the spread of English adoption of English as the medium for instruc-
as a world language is involved in commercial tion at the tertiary level has also enhanced the
imperatives deriving from globalization, and status of English within society. The language
thus more advanced business communication of instruction in public schools is Arabic with
English studied as a foreign language from
grades 1 to 12. However, many Emirati and
MICK RANDALL is currently other expatriate Arabs send their children to
Dean of the Faculty of private schools, most of which adopt English as
Education at the British the medium for instruction, and this is a con-
University in Dubai. He is tributory factor to the growth of the use of Eng-
Programme Coordinator for lish. Currently a Competence in English
the Master’s in Education at Proficiency examination (CEPA) acts as a gate-
BUiD and has led a team to way examination (along with Mathematics)
validate an EdD programme
at the British University in
for entry into tertiary education for Emiratis
Dubai starting in October wishing to join federal university programmes.
2009. He is interested in providing feedback, However, partly as an indication of concern
counseling and cross-cultural interaction in about the falling standards in Arabic, there are
pedagogic situations and has published ‘Advising moves to add a TOEFL-type test in Arabic as a
and Supporting Teachers’ with Cambridge necessary entry qualification for entrance to
University Press. He has just released a new book university (Shamaa, 2008).
‘Memory, Psychology and Second Language A survey amongst students at Zayed Univer-
Learning’, published by John Benjamin. sity (a university currently reserved for Emirati
Email: [email protected] females and one of the major federal universi-
MOHAMMAD AMIR SAMIMI
ties in the UAE) into their attitudes about learn-
is an English Language ing in Arabic as against English revealed that
Instructor at English 50% preferred to be taught in English and only
Language Center in the 22% said they preferred to be taught in Arabic
University of Sharjah. (28% reported ‘both’), indicating that, at least
He holds an MA in English at the tertiary level, students in general had
Language Teaching from the no problems with studying in English (Findlow,
British University in Dubai in 2006). Their preferences for English in
collaboration with The descending order of frequency were given as:
University of Birmingham. He
is currently pursuing his studies leading to an EdD 1 ‘lughat al ‘asr’ or ‘world language’
in TESOL in the same university. He has taught 2 ‘good to study a second language’ or ‘to
English, Arabic, and, Persian courses in different communicate with outsiders’
universities and schools in the UAE and Iran. He is 3 ‘for work’
interested in Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism and 4 ‘to help with my study’ (Findlow, 2006: 26)
Bilingual Education Policy, Comparative
Linguistics, Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language, This positive attitude to study in English as
World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca, Error reported by the undergraduates is in contrast
Analysis, and Corpus Linguistics and is currently to a study in government schools, where
doing research on ‘languages spoken at home’ in Mustafa (2003 cited in Troudi, 2007) reports
Emirati families. Email: [email protected] that 73% of students have a negative attitude

44 ENGLISH TODAY 101 March 2010

to English. Although the Findlow study would all Arabic countries. Arabic speakers, for exam-
seem to indicate that the undergraduates ple, feel that their classical language is the
themselves are comfortable with using English most beautiful and logical, with an incompara-
as a medium of instruction, criticism has been ble grammatical symmetry and lexical rich-
leveled at the decision to use English as a ness. Classical Arabic is strongly identified
medium of instruction at the tertiary level con- with religion, as the language of the Qur’an is
cerning the negative effects that such a deci- held to provide miraculous evidence of the
sion is likely to have on the status and use of truth of Islam (Crystal, 1987). However, there
Arabic as a major language for academic dis- are several significantly diverse regional
cussion (Troudi, 2007). dialects of Arabic as well as other languages
This spread of English is not without addi- widely spoken by the residents of Dubai. In
tional socio-political problems. There are many fact, the Arabic dialect spoken by the Egyptian
within the Emirati and Arabic communities community is quite different from the Palestin-
who are deeply concerned with the effect that ian dialect, for instance. Iraqis speak a dialect
such a language shift is having on the quality of which is so distant from Algerians that the two
the Arabic language used in the UAE. There is sets of speakers are virtually incomprehensible
a lively debate in the press at the national level to each other. Most Arab nationals, including
about the necessity to preserve and improve Emirati locals, tend to speak a form of simpli-
the Arabic language. It is a prime goal of the fied, ‘ungrammatical’ broken Arabic with non-
government in the UAE to preserve and protect Arabic residents of the UAE such as maids and
Arabic culture and language and the federal manual workers. Arab children have problems
government makes every effort through legis- mastering the formal Arabic which they learn
lation to do so (Al Baik, 2008). In Dubai, the in schools and this is very different from their
National Strategic Plan for 2016 specifically spoken dialect which itself has very low status
emphasizes the need to enhance Arabic lan- within society. Although Graddol (2006)
guage and local culture in society. 2008 was argues that Arabic, demographically speaking,
named as the year of national identity by is the fastest growing of the world languages, it
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the is hard to find any evidence of such growth in
UAE, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice Dubai.
President of the UAE, organized a national Professional institutions specializing in
identity conference, the major theme of which teaching Arabic to adult non-native speakers of
was the degradation of the Arabic language. Arabic are a rarity. There are very few private
However, there seems to be an obvious incon- institutes teaching Arabic in Dubai with a lim-
sistency between intended objectives and the ited number of learners. There is no standard-
reality on the streets and in business. ized and uniform syllabus from the UAE
Ministry of Education, which has led to a
chaotic situation in terms of Arabic language
Status of Arabic
learning for adults since institutes teach their
Arabic is de jure the official language in Dubai own materials with a focus on spoken language.
and elsewhere in the United Arab Emirates but Thus the phonological model is largely based
many would argue that English has a de facto on the different teachers’ accents. They tend to
lingua franca status, particularly in Dubai. All ignore the fact that Standard Modern Arabic is
official documents and correspondence need the form of Arabic understood by all Arabs
to be written in Arabic, unlike in Singapore around the world. Their excuse is that Standard
where official documents can be written in any Modern Arabic is very difficult to teach and
of the four official languages. Although, in the it takes a lot of time and effort to learn the script
public sector and government offices, all docu- or the pronunciation of Arabic. Therefore,
ments are to be prepared, translated, and pre- non-Arabic speaking students learn a type of
sented in Arabic, in almost all banks, Arabic which is neither the dialect spoken
businesses, hospitals, universities, and the pri- locally, nor a dialect which can be used across
vate sector, English is the lingua franca, even different national groups. Summarizing the
of written documents. situation in a lecture at the Emirates Centre
The commonly held view is that due to its for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR),
centrality to Islam, Arabic is indisputably the McLaughlin (2008) states, ‘Apprehension about
official language of the UAE and elsewhere in the language, limited number of institutes that

THE STATUS OF ENGLISH IN DUBAI 45

teach Arabic properly, and as the Arab popula- in Singapore it is the variety of the lingua
tion is small there is no opportunity to speak franca (i.e. English) not the mother tongue
Arabic with UAE nationals.’ which is hotly debated.
In addition, the situation with regard to the
use of Arabic in the community and the effect
The study
of this on the quality of Arabic literacy of the
local population also involves a number of The aim of this paper is to examine the views of
issues concerning the acceptability of different commissioned and non-commissioned police
varieties of Arabic, most notably spoken, as officers about the use of English, although the
against formal dialects. Issues concerning the questionnaires used were not specifically
acceptability of different varieties of English designed for this purpose (they were essen-
have formed a major strand in the ELF/World tially designed as a needs analysis for design-
Englishes/EIL debates and have largely been ing police training courses and asked for their
resolved in favor of prioritizing communicative reasons for learning English). The Dubai Police
competence (Seidlhofer, 2001, Saraceni, Academy provides non-compulsory English
2008). However, these issues are, as yet, not classes for all ranks of officer and civilians and
clearly articulated within the debate concern- it is these classes for which the data was being
ing Arabic. Although forms of Arabic are used collected, although not all the respondents
extensively within different groups of society were currently enrolled in classes. The open
(as indicated above) and between Arabs from responses to the questions were examined to
different parts of the Middle East, the huge dif- determine:
ferential status of ‘fusHa’ (Standard Modern 1 The degree to which the respondents saw
Arabic) and ‘ammiyah’ (the spoken form) English as a lingua franca in Dubai
means that the debate centers on the ‘degrada-
tion’ of the language through the inability of 2 Whether there was any indication amongst
these officers of a negative attitude to the use
the local population to use the more presti-
of ELF
gious form of the language. There is, as yet, lit-
tle acceptance of the value of the spoken form From within the questionnaire, the responses
of the language. This concern with the ‘degra- to the following questions form the main qual-
dation’ of Arabic (or, more accurately, the per- itative data used in this study:
ceived decline in the use of SMA) is not 1 Why are you taking the English course?
confined to the Emirati population. Other Arab
residents from different countries in the ME 2 What are the practical situations in which
you need to use English?
also express similar concerns (Constantine,
2007). 3 Describe an embarrassing situation in which
The question of the status of different lan- you really needed English and your lack of
guage dialects finds a contrasting parallel in English caused you problems.
Singapore. In Singapore the adoption of Eng- In addition, respondents were asked to rate the
lish as a Lingua Franca has led to the emer- following statements on a 1 – 5 Likert scale of
gence of a local variety of English, Singlish. strongly agree to strongly disagree:
This variety of English has attracted adverse
reactions from the Government of Singapore I think English has become the most important
language in Dubai.
leading to the attempt to impose the use of
I think all the police should be able to
standard English, the ‘Speak Good English communicate in English.
Movement’. Thus, statements such as (our I am opposed to using other languages in my
emphasis) ‘Singlish is English corrupted by Sin- work. I think we should only use Arabic.
gapore’ (SGEM website, February 2003 and
letter to Editor, Straits Times Forum, 1998 All questionnaires were delivered in Arabic and
cited in Chng (2003)) indicate the official gov- the responses were translated into English for
ernment view of the emergence and use of the analysis by the two authors. Using a process of
non-standard variety within Singapore. (See open and axial coding (Robson, 2002), the fol-
Randall & Teo, 2003, for a discussion of the lowing categories were arrived at:
SGEM in Singapore.) Interestingly, in contrast 1 Work needs/career requirements
to Dubai and the Gulf where it is the effect of 2 Daily life/social life
ELF on Arabic which is the cause for concern, 3 Current time/international/global language

46 ENGLISH TODAY 101 March 2010

 4 Traveling abroad Results and discussion
5 Personal development/personal satisfaction
6 Technological needs/IT skills Samples of the verbatim responses to questions
7 Educational/ scientific/academic skills 1 and 2 on the questionnaire can be seen in the
8 Business needs panel below with indications in bold of the key
9 Other words used in coding.
The distribution of responses over the 9 cat-
330 respondents from 26 different police
egories for all of the respondents is shown in
departments took part in the survey. The fol-
Figure 1.
lowing is an overall profile of those completing
The results of the responses to the reasons
the questionnaire:

Table 1 The subjects who took part in the survey

Gender: 87% male 13% female

Age range: 56% below 30 years old 44% over 30 years old
Nationality: 54% UAE locals 46% non-locals
Education: 47% high school graduates 29% university students/ 24% high school
graduates dropouts
English level: 50% intermediate 41% elementary 9% advanced
Ranks 26% officers 74% non-commissioned

Sample responses from the questionnaire

● It is important for the daily life, work and ● It is the most important language in our
contact with different nationalities. time. It is our society's lingua franca which
● It is the language of the world. I want to be means constant interaction in English.
familiarized with cultures of other nations ● English is the language of the current time,
through interaction with them and reading computer, internet, scientific, and literary
their books. research. It is the language of interaction,
● English is the language of our current time. conversation, business, and work in
● It is a daily life necessity. I use it at work, in general. English is 1st language in the
the market and when travelling. I need it a world.
lot in my work.

Figure 1 Overall responses in the different categories (NB total responses not respondents)

THE STATUS OF ENGLISH IN DUBAI 47

for studying English within the different cate- English (33%), but daily/social life emerges as
gories were remarkably consistent across gen- the next most common reason (24%). The
der, age, officers and non-commissioned third most mentioned reason is that of the
officers, locals and expatriates. A Kruskal-Wal- importance of English as a world language.
lis Test for K-independent samples showed that What is perhaps surprising is that more per-
there were no significant differences between sonal, non-work related reasons were not men-
the Overall Responses categories and the vari- tioned more frequently. Given the voluntary
ables of gender, age, rank, nationality and edu- nature of the English programme, and the fact
cation (Chi-square = 8.00, df 8, n.s.). Separate that not all the respondents were enrolled on
Mann-Whitney tests carried out on male/ them, one might have expected a greater vari-
female, under/over 30s, officers/non-commis- ety of personal reasons for learning English,
sioned officers and locals versus expatriates particularly educational reasons, considering
showed no significant differences between the the importance of English within the UAE as a
response categories. A separate Kruskal-Wallis medium of study. What is clear, however, is
Test of K-independent samples carried out on that the ‘ELF’ reasons for learning English (in
those with varying levels of education also which we include social, daily life and ‘commu-
showed no significant difference between the nication with others’) are rated very highly by
groups on their reasons for learning English. the group. Another aspect which emerges from
Not surprisingly, given the situation in which the responses is the highly instrumental as
the survey was conducted, work needs emerges against integrative motivations for using Eng-
as the most common reason given for learning lish. Qashoa (2006) found similar instrumental

Table 3 Responses to reasons for learning English. NB responses (%)

Categories 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
All 297 214 128 25 83 32 39 15 66
responses (33) (24) (14) (3) (9) (4) (4) (2) (7)
Gender Male 255 182 107 23 74 29 36 15 57
(33) (23) (14) (3) (10) (40) (5) (2) (7)
Female 42 32 21 2 9 3 3 0 9
(35) (26) (17) (2) (7) (2) (2) (0) (7)
Age <30 166 116 71 18 48 13 21 7 31
(34) (24) (14) (4) (10) (3) (4) (1) (6)
>30 127 94 55 7 36 19 17 8 35
(32) (24) (14) (2) (9) (5) (4) (2) (9)
Rank Officers 59 50 28 3 21 9 9 8 16
(29) (25) (14) (1) (10) (4) (4) (4) (8)
Non-com 194 141 88 21 49 16 20 6 43
(34) (24) (15) (4) (8) (3) (3) (1) (7)
Nationality Local 156 119 62 14 47 14 18 9 31
(33) (25) (13) (3) (10) (3) (4) (2) (7)
Expat 141 94 62 11 41 18 25 10 29
(33) (22) (14) (3) (10) (4) (6) (2) (7)
Education <HS 72 45 21 8 23 4 5 3 19
(36) (23) (11) (4) (12) (2) (3) (2) (10)
HS Dip 141 103 69 15 31 14 12 4 28
(34) (25) (17) (4) (7) (3) (3) (1) (7)
HE grads 82 65 39 2 29 14 22 8 18
(29) (23) (14) (1) (10) (5) (8) (3) (6)

48 ENGLISH TODAY 101 March 2010

motivations for learning English amongst sec- This is congruent with the Findlow (2006)
ondary students learning English in the UAE, study which showed that university under-
but his findings indicated stronger integrative graduates were quite comfortable with study-
motivations than was apparent in this data. ing in English. Thus, there would seem to be an
Our data replicates some of the categories underlying pragmatic imperative underlying
found by Findlow (2006). English as a ‘world the use of English in the Dubai police force
language’ appears in her study as the most fre- and, by implication, in the UAE in general. It is
quent category; within our data it was a very likely that the use of the language will con-
common reason, although it was generally tinue to spread, despite the concerns of many
rated third behind work and daily life in both about the implications that this will have on
overall responses and within each sub-group. Arabic. There is certainly no indication that
In her data, work is less important than com- there will be anything like a return to the use of
munication with others and, not surprisingly Arabic as a lingua franca in society. 䡵
given the context of her survey, helping with
study is rated much more highly than it is in
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50 ENGLISH TODAY 101 March 2010