Language, Attitudes and Repertoires in the Emirates (LARES) is a sociolinguistic study that aims, among other things, to find out how the languages spoken in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are used and by whom. The project concentrates on the relationship between English and Arabic specifically in Sharjah and Dubai, as well as on the role of English in the Emirates as a de facto lingua franca. The project is a collaboration between researchers Prof. Dr. Peter Siemund (University of Hamburg), PD Dr. Jacob Leimgruber (Universities of Freiburg and Basel) and Prof. Dr. Ahmad Al-Issa (American University of Sharjah).
In order to find out more about the project, I interviewed three of the research assistants from the University of Hamburg, Eliane Lorenz, Sharareh Rahbari and Katrin Feindt. As an important part of the project, they travelled to Dubai and Sharjah and conducted a series of interviews with a variety of students from the American University of Sharjah on their linguistic background.
In this first clip, they expand on the background of the research, how they conducted the interviews and other aspects of their field research.
Considering that the study involved interviewing over 100 students, Eliane, Sharareh and Katrin had a lot of results which highlighted the variety in sociolinguistic backgrounds that is so prevalent in the Emirates. A surprising piece of information gained from the interviews was the multilingualism of the majority of those interviewed. Another interesting factor is the evident importance English plays in the Emirates; according to the students, a person living in the UAE could technically live without speaking Arabic – the Emirates’ official language – but they could not do without speaking English.
In the second clip, Eliane, Sharareh and Katrin tell us more about the study and the results they gained from the interviews.
Since one of the leading investigators of LARES is Prof. Peter Siemund from the Institute of English and American Studies at the University of Hamburg, I asked Eliane, Sharareh and Katrin how the project was relevant, if at all, to the institute’s English as a World Language (ENGAGE) MA program. Sharareh stated that the audio files that resulted from the study could be used by postgraduate students to carry out analyses of the sociolinguistic aspects and the results could also be useful to produce phonetic analyses which could then be the basis for their theses.
At the moment of the interview, a number of students enrolled in the ENGAGE program were also working as student helpers in order to sort through the vast amount of data and create transcriptions of the files which could then be potentially used for the programs’ seminars.
For updates on the LARES, a ResearchGate page has been created with the intention of uploading any resulting papers from the ongoing research.
