Promoting Arabic as a Foreign Language in the Middle East and North Africa: Host-Grounded Study Abroad Discourses
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v36i1.792Keywords:
Arabic, cultural representation, MENA, promotional discourse, study abroadAbstract
Following the 9/11 tragedies, the interest in Arabic language and culture in non-traditional destinations such as MENA (Middle East & North Africa) has become vastly obscured with sociocultural and political issues. The mandate to maintain national security served to designate the language and its destinations critical, producing the hegemony of a political rationality that thrives on the globalist commodification of language and risks the homogenization of world cultures. To interrogate these essentialist discourses and others, we examine the ideologies underlying MENA host-grounded discourses to discern the valorization of the language in those destinations, as steered by the needs of globalization and power relations. Drawing upon an adapted, complementary multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) approach, the current study analyzes the linguistic and visual resources of three study abroad (SA) programs’ websites. We argue that the orientalist gaze is bidirectional within the host and U.S. based discourse for matters of sociopolitical and economic interdependencies and that joint constructions of global hierarchies and economic inaccessibilities remain prevalent.
ملخص الدراسة:أصبح الاهتمام باللغة والثقافة العربية في الوجهات غير التقليدية مثل منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا في أعقاب مآسي الحادي عشر من سبتمبر محجوباً إلى حد كبير بالقضايا الاجتماعية والثقافية والسياسية. وقد ساهم تفويضُ الحفاظ على الأمن القومي في اعتبار اللغة العربية ووجهات دراستها على نحو الحرج، بما عزز هيمنة العقلانية السياسية التي تزدهر بالتسليع العولماتي للغة، وبما يهدد في نفس الوقت بتجنيس ثقافات العالم. لتحرّي هذه الخطابات التأصيلية وغيرها نقوم هنا بتحليل الأيديولوجيات الكامنة وراء الخطابات المرتكزة على المدارس المضيفة في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا لتمييز قيمة اللغة في تلك الوجهات وفقًا لمتطلبات العولمة وعلاقات القوة. نقوم بذلك عبر الاعتماد على منهج مكيَّف ومتكامل لتحليل الخطاب النقدي متعدد الوسائط الذي نحلل عبره في هذه الدراسة الموارد النصية والبصرية لثلاثة مواقع إلكترونية لبرامج الدراسة بالخارج، ونبني على ذلك في جدالنا أن النظرة الاستشراقية ثنائية الاتجاه داخل الخطاب الأمريكي وخطاب الجهة المستضيفة للطلاب فيما يتعلق بمسائل الترابط الاجتماعي والسياسي والاقتصادي، وأن البناء المشترك للتسلسلات الهرمية العالمية وصعوبة وجود الوصول الاقتصادي لا يزال سائدًا.
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