Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Arabic domain has been shared between English and French since at least the later nineteenth century when Arab land fell under the hegemony of the two powers. Today, Arabic is still sharing that space with those two languages, but with a marked global influence of English. This is a comparative study based on field work in Morocco, the Arab Gulf, Egypt, Jordan and Israel. The question to be asked is “how do young Arabs make sense of their subjectivity and globalization, in terms of who they are and what they speak?” With the surge of population in all of these countries, Arab youth have been dealing with political instability and oppression and neo-liberal and unequal wealth distribution. Aiding me in answering this question is ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the above countries in 2013-2017. I also rely on interviews with journalists and college students, and on the printed media.