Language, Ideology and Sociopolitical Change in the Arabic-speaking World

The first systematic survey of the language planning and language policy discourse of major Arabic language academies

• Surveys the language planning and language policy discourse of the five major Arabic language academies in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Jorndan
• Reveals the role of LPLP in constructing and negotiating sociopolitical meanings of language
• Examines the discourse of Arabic language academies on diglossia, Arabi(ci)sation and language modernisation
• Presents a comparative study of script Romanisation movements in China and the Arabic-speaking world
• Explains a mechanism of language-ideology interface in the Arabic-speaking world
• Offers a synthesis of theories and perspectives across disciplines to study sociopolitical dimensions of language

This book offers a critical interpretation of how the meta-linguistic LPLP discourse of major Arabic language academies from the turn of the twentieth century until the present day continuously ‘burden’ language with extra-linguistic, sociopolitical meanings, making it a proxy for the protracted courses of national identity negotiation, counter-peripheralisation in the modern world-system and modernisation. Integrating theories of language symbolism, language indexicality, LPLP, habitus, banal nationalism, world-system and perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis, the book develops our understanding of the phenomenon and mechanism of the entanglement between language, ideology and sociopolitical change in the Arabic-speaking world and beyond.