Abstract
This study investigates the linguistic attitudes and perceptions of Qatar University students regarding the utility and vitality of the two languages that define the education and communication scenes in Qatar, namely, Arabic and English. It also reports on the predictors of these attitudes in terms of demographic traits. 861 students completed a questionnaire that was divided into: Media Language Preference (MLP); Value and Symbolism of Arabic (VSA); Arabic in Education and Society (AES); Medium of Instruction (MOI); Impact of Al-Jazeera Network (IJN); English in Scientific and Professional Communication (ESPC); Qatari Cultural Identity (QCI); Arabic Books (AB); English in Society and Work (ESW); Language in Workplace (LIW); Arabic in Employment (AE); Status of Arabic (SA); and Manifestations of Sociocultural Identity (MSI). Results showed that Arabic got higher ratings for MLP, VSA, AES, MOI, QCI, and MSI, while English was perceived as more useful than Arabic in ESPC. Correlational analysis showed that Gender had significant correlations with MLP, MOI, ESPC, and MSI, while Nationality, Specialization, and Number of spoken languages had correlations with MLP and MOI.
Highlights
The status of English as an international language has been constantly growing since World War II as a result of the imperial history of Britain and the rising military, economic, and political power of the United States of America
The data extracted from the responses of 51 questions by 861 participants were entered into a Principal Component analysis to categorize all questions into orthogonal factors based on their underlying covariance
Applying the English-Medium Education in Multilingual University Settings (EMEMUS) conceptual framework to the data in this study clearly showed the complexity of the English as medium of instruction (EMI) language policy in Qatar, especially the intersection among the various components of the framework
Summary
The status of English as an international language has been constantly growing since World War II as a result of the imperial history of Britain and the rising military, economic, and political power of the United States of America. With the advent of globalization, English acquired the status of the language of human, social, and economic development; of research in all fields of knowledge; of modernity, technology, and trade; and of international communication and social media. English is seen as a major component of the multilingual structure, moving in many instances from being English as a foreign language (EFL) to encompassing the more vital role of English as medium of instruction (EMI) (Dearden, 2014). These variations in the status of English depend on past historical and political conditions, such as colonialism, ethnic composition, political systems, ideology, and the socioeconomic situation in each country
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