LANGUAGE PLANNING IN SAUDI ARABIA (1927-2019): ARABIC AND OTHER LANGUAGES.

AuthorZumor, Abdul Wahed Qasem Ghaleb Al
  1. Introduction

    Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918-1920, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud became the Sultan of Hejaz in 1926, then Najd became under his control in 1927 and he ruled Hejaz, Najd and their dependencies. In 1927, the treaty of Jeddah was signed between the United Kingdom and Ibn Saud (Wynbrandt, 2010) and the sovereignty over what was then known as the Kingdom of Hejaz and Najd was recognized by the UK. The new kingdom later gained recognition from the then USSR, USA, and many other countries. It was at this critical stage in the history of the Kingdom that Saudi Arabia started framing its language policy and language planning (henceforth, LPP) at both national and international levels. The first language Act (14) of the new state was issued by the Shura Council (the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia) on the 21st of September, 1927 stating that it is mandatory to ensure that Arabic is fully taken care of because it is the official language of Hejaz and Najd State particularly in internal trading transactions. Moreover, the Arabic standard style must be observed at the lexical and grammatical levels (Corpus of Arabic Language Acts in Saudi Arabia, 2015).

    In September 1932, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud united his lands as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is a historic landmark in the history of the country. This tremendous move towards building new Saudi Arabia had a huge impact on the Kingdom's development in different aspects. Language planning measures were always present to keep abreast of all changes since 1932 until today. Most of language planning efforts have been directed toward preserving and consolidating the status of Arabic. Mahboob (2018) believes that "[Arabic] is considered to be a holy tongue and is the language of the intellectuals and the power holders and dominant groups in the region [Gulf Cooperation Council] (henceforth, GCC). As such, it is projected as a uniting power and the symbol of Arabness. The choice of Arabic as the language of the state is strongly tied to elements of nationalism (Bitar, 2011; Suleiman, 2003)."

    The history of language policy and planning in Saudi Arabia has not been systematically studied in a way that explores and classifies the types of language planning activities under the established categories known in the literature, namely status, corpus, and acquisition planning. This study is an attempt to fill this gap and basically to track the changes in the language policy and planning across the history of the Kingdom given the fact that Saudi Arabia is a dynamic country and plays significant political, economic, and religious roles at regional and international levels.

  2. Literature review

    One of the much cited definitions of language planning in the literature is Cooper's (1989), which states that "language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behavior of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their language codes." Similarly, May and Hornberger (2008) define language planning as "deliberate efforts to affect the structure, function, and acquisition of languages." Starting with these two definitions is justified considering the focus of the present study. These definitions clearly categorize all language planning efforts and activities under acquisition, corpus, and status planning. The first use of the status-planning/corpus-planning typology was by Heinz Kloss (1969), while acquisition-planning as a third type of language planning was introduced 20 years later (Cooper 1989). Status planning is mainly concerned with planning the functions of a specific language. According to Wright (2012), it refers to "... the process whereby state elites identify a language variety as the national language to be used in all the formal functions of state business." Corpus planning as defined by Kaplan and Baldauf (1997) deals with "... those aspects of language planning which are primarily linguistic and hence internal to language. Some of these aspects related to language are: (a) orthographic innovation, including design, harmonization, change of script, and spelling reform; (b) pronunciation; (c) changes in language structure; (d) vocabulary expansion; (e) simplification of registers; (f) style; and (g) the preparation of language material." This type of language planning plays a significant role in state and nation-building. Wright (2012) argues, "Corpus planning became a conscious activity and part of the growing desire to achieve and maintain linguistic cohesion within the state." These efforts are usually controlled and promoted by language academy institutions. The last major type relevant to this study is acquisition planning which plays the role of improving language proficiency as well as creating new speakers, usually through teaching (Sallabank 2012).

    The language map of Saudi Arabia comprises not only Arabic and its regional varieties, but also Mehri, a south Arabian language and many other languages spoken by expatriates from the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, etc. to serve language needs within their social circles.

    Very few studies have discussed language policy and planning in Saudi Arabia and the majority of them deal with issues of English language in education policy (Faruk, 2013; Payne and Almansour, 2014; Kirkpatrick, 2017; Barnawi and Al-Hawsawi, 2017; Elyas and Badawood, 2016). Arabic as the national and official language has not received enough research attention even though a considerable trajectory of policy texts have existed and have always accompanied and responded to many changes that have taken place throughout the modern history of Saudi Arabia. Payne and Almansour (2014) argue that "Language planning in Saudi Arabia has been developed around maintaining Arabic culture and language." They also claim that "The introduction of any other language could be seen as an introduction to another religion and consequently a threat to Islam and the status of Arabic in the country." This claim is not confirmed in any of the policy statements traced from 1927 to 2019, an argument that will be discussed further in this article. This study will also attempt to respond to Payne and Almansour's argument that "Any attempt to plan to introduce other languages, or indeed to modernize Arabic, could be seen as a threat to Arabic and thus access to the Qur'an." At least, this is not the state's position and many language policy acts unequivocally regulate the relationship between Arabic and other languages in different domains of use. Marzouq's study (2017) raised the concern about Mehri language shift in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman, and suggested a plan to revitalize and rescue this endangered language from 'disuse'. Alseqair (2017) studied the attitude of Mehri students in the primary and intermediate schools towards Mehri and Arabic languages and their speakers and the language they prefer as a medium of instruction. The major findings indicate that the Mehri school students have positive attitudes towards both languages, but wish to be taught in Mehri which is their heritage language. The study recommends that the ministry of education should address the linguistic needs of these minority language speakers. Saleh (2017) detailed the efforts of Saudi Arabia to spread Arabic and to improve its teaching methods. His study surveyed many institutes and centers that serve Arabic inside and outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the workshops, conferences and publications that aim at enhancing the teaching methods of Arabic were also highlighted in this study.

    A very interesting concern was raised by Mahboob, Elyas, and Al-Issa (2018) in a workshop titled Shaping the Future of the GCC Countries through Language Policy and Planning: Concepts, Challenges and Aspirations where they rang the alarm bell regarding the role that various heritage and migrant languages play, which serve "identity purposes of the local and migrant populations" in GCC (including Saudi Arabia)--an area of research which is 'under-explored'--while Arabization policies have recently been adopted and "English continues to play an important role in the educational and corporate sectors...". The authors argue that "these policies do not consider the role and contribution of heritage and migrant languages that form part of the linguistic ecology of the region."

    The scarcity of research on the comprehensive language policy and planning is a gap this study is attempting to bridge. This gap-filling mission in the literature on language policy and planning in Saudi Arabia can be used for any further research since it highlights the top-down language planning trajectory as expressed in a reliable and official corpus of policy texts from 1927 until 2019.

  3. Methodology

    It is not an easy task to decide one specific method while conducting a language policy and planning research given the myriad of available data collection tools described by Hornberger (2015) as "... a dizzying array of choices confronting the would-be LPP researcher." Based on the basic source used to investigate the Saudi language policy and planning documents, this study employs Tollefson's (2015) historical-structural approach and the discourse-analytical methods to examine both "the historical and sociopolitical processes that lead to the development of language policies... and to examine the LPP process 'on the ground,'... with a focus on how policy texts and discourses relate to language practices in schools and communities" (Hult and Johnson, 2015). Tollefson (2015) states that the historical-structural approach covers macro- and micro-levels of data and analysis. The major concern of this study is the macro-level data which "... include a range of phenomena such as ideologies implicit in policies and plans or rationales for them...

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