Abstract
Abstract This study examines the communication strategies employed by Qatar’s government in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The study contributes to a growing body of work on the sociolinguistics of crisis communication. We focus on the use of South and Southeast Asian languages, spoken largely by blue-collar migrant workers, which are often seen as peripheral even though they are spoken by a large segment of the population. The deployment of these languages during Qatar’s COVID-19 awareness campaign assumes further significance against the backdrop of a series of measures taken by the government in the last few years to strengthen the status and use of Arabic. We analyze multilingual printed pamphlets, multilingual audio-visual communication through radio and social media, as well as interviews conducted with key figures who were part of the awareness campaign. Our examination of the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability of the multilingual awareness materials reveals that while the different languages and modes of communication were important in spreading awareness, equally critical, if not more, was who carried the information and in what forms. We show the significant roles community and religious leaders and social media influencers played in disseminating the awareness information to the diverse migrant language communities.
Highlights
While much recent work in sociolinguistics has focused on the symbolic function of language, the COVID-19 pandemic and attempts to swiftly contain it has brought This workR
It was during this time frame when the government ministries along with Qatar Media Corporation (QMC) started various multilingual COVID-19 awareness campaigns in languages beyond just Arabic and English, such as Hindi, Malayalam, Urdu, Bengali, Tagalog, Tamil, Sinhalese, Indonesian, and Nepali
The closing part of our analysis examines the use of online platforms for the COVID-19 awareness campaign, since use of online sources like social media platforms increases during crises
Summary
While much recent work in sociolinguistics has focused on the symbolic function of language, the COVID-19 pandemic and attempts to swiftly contain it has brought. Based on an analysis of a variety of data sources that include multilingual awareness material in both oral and written forms, interviews with radio station officials and participants involved in Qatar’s COVID-19 awareness campaign, this study examines the efforts and strategies used by the government ministries in Qatar to overcome language and cultural barriers in delivering awareness information to the linguistically and culturally diverse migrant workers. We focus on the use of South and Southeast Asian migrant languages, referred to by van Den Hoven and Carroll (2016) as “peripheral languages” in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states Speakers of these languages often have less access to information than those proficient in Arabic and English and as Hopkyns (2020) describes within the neighboring context of the United Arab Emirates, they are “vulnerable due to language-based discrimination at multiple levels.”. Speakers of these languages often have less access to information than those proficient in Arabic and English and as Hopkyns (2020) describes within the neighboring context of the United Arab Emirates, they are “vulnerable due to language-based discrimination at multiple levels.” The need for effective communication transcending the existing language barriers is critical in a crisis situation such as the one faced during COVID-19 in which lack of information could contribute to the spread of the virus leading to more infections and deaths
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