Speaker
Description
The current study zooms into two locations, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Republic of Maldives, that share several linguistically relevant developmental similarities (Meierkord 2018) and investigates the status and role of English within the countries’ multilingual ecologies. Historically, the English used in the UAE and the Maldives differs from other prototypical postcolonial Englishes, because the two countries were not directly under British rule but had established international relations as British protectorates (Bernaisch et al. 2025; Siemund et al. 2021). Both rely heavily on the tourism industry, have undergone societal changes with high influxes of labor migrants, and English has been introduced through education and established as the main medium of instruction (Meierkord 2018; Siemund et al. 2021). While there is hardly any research on English or multilingualism in the Maldives (Meiekord 2018; but see Bernaisch et al. 2025), there has been an increasing interest in investigating English and other languages in the Gulf region in recent years (e.g., Boyle 2011; Parra-Guinaldo & Lanteigne 2021; Randall & Samimi 2010; Siemund et al. 2021).
The study relies on different yet comparable online survey data. The surveys were conducted in 2019 (UAE, n = 692) and 2024 (Maldives, n = 94) in two densely populated regions, Sharjah, one of UAE’s seven sovereign emirates, and Malé, the capital of the Maldives. The respondents were exclusively (UAE) or largely (Maldives) university students in their early twenties. With this, the data are not representative of the societies at large, yet one can argue that these speakers are the drivers of newly developing norms (Bernaisch et al. 2025; Sankoff 2018) which makes an investigation of them the most interesting, when aiming to make future developmental predictions. In addition, recorded sociolinguistic interviews (UAE, n =115) and pair conversations (Maldives, n = 47) provide insights into language use patterns.
The study investigates (1) language use patterns in different domains (e.g., spoken, written, private, public) with a focus on the local languages (Dhivehi, Arabic) versus English and possibly other languages, (3) the level of self-reported multilingualism, and (2) it considers attitudes towards English spoken in the respective locations. It tries to establish whether the historical similarities shared by the two regions also manifest in similarities with respect to language profiles, usage patterns, and attitudes.
It has been shown that English is indeed the lingua franca in the UAE, albeit Arabic is the official language (Lorenz 2023). This is especially apparent in the public domain, but increasingly so in the private sector, with differences between Emirati and other Arab expatriates, on the one hand, and South Asian and other citizenship groups, on the other. The differences, however, largely relate to the absence or presence of Arabic (Lorenz 2023). It is hypothesized that similarities can be found in the Maldives, with English, the main lingua franca, gaining in importance, and restricting the use of Dhivehi (Meierkord 2018; Bernaisch et al. 2025). Citizenship differences, however, will not be relevant, because all participants in the data collected in the Maldives are Maldivians.