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Issue 44. Spring 2028

 

Thematic section: The Arabic language in Spain: discourses, representations and practices in the face of linguistic racialisation

Editor of the thematic section: Dr Adil Moustaoui Srhir (Complutense University of Madrid)

 

Key dates:

• Deadline for submission of articles: 1 February 2028
• Notification of review or acceptance: 31 March 2028
• Publication date: April 2028

*Preliminary proposals with a 400-word abstract will be accepted until 30 November 2027; please write to the editor, Adil Moustaoui, at <adilmous@ucm.es>

 

The presence of the Arabic language in Spain gives rise to debates that go far beyond its teaching, family language policies relating to intergenerational transmission, political recognition in the autonomous city of Ceuta (Moustaoui 2021) or its everyday use and presence in public spaces. Furthermore, in certain political, media and institutional discourses, Arabic is associated with notions of threat, cultural incompatibility or a lack of integration. These representations could influence the social and public perception of the language, the opportunities to learn or pass it on, and the decisions of its speakers regarding where and with whom to use it. These socio-political representations of the Arabic language and other languages associated with Islam also demonstrate how language is capable of mediating the construction and legitimisation of a framework of compatibility used to prohibit, monitor and punish linguistic communities articulated or constructed as Muslim, on the one hand. On the other hand, they demonstrate how language is capable of shaping contemporary raciolinguistic and racial constructs and ideologies (Alim et al, 2016; Flores and Rosa, 2015; Khan, 2021). At the same time, in this new socio-political context in Spain, families, teachers and the communities themselves are asserting its value, not only as a regional minority language or heritage language, but also as a resource for socio-cultural and political participation, which is an inseparable part of life trajectories, particularly for Spanish speakers of Moroccan or Arab origin in general (Prego García and Zas Varela, 2023).

This thematic section therefore invites research into how representations of the Arabic language in Spain are produced, circulated and contested, as well as their possible relationships with linguistic practices. From the perspective of applied linguistics, it is of interest to examine both the discourses that attribute social meanings to a language and its speakers, and the experiences of those who negotiate these meanings in educational, family, media and public spheres. The thematic section will pay particular attention to:

1. i) processes of linguistic racialisation within the framework of the raciolinguistic perspective (Flores & Rosa 2023) and glottophobia (Blanchet 2017).
2. ii) the production of moral panic, without presupposing that such processes operate in the same way in all contexts, nor that there is a direct causal relationship between public discourse and individual behaviour.

iii) it will also address the concept of cultural war as an analytical category for understanding contemporary forms of production of this moral and social panic surrounding the Arabic language in the context of neoliberalism and the rise of the far right.

Research on the following topics will be welcomed:

• policies and controversies relating to the teaching of Arabic as a heritage language.
• representations of its different varieties in political discourse and the media.
• translation decisions and linguistic mediation in news coverage of conflicts
• experiences of language use, maintenance or withdrawal in migration contexts.
• the presence, absence or portrayal of Arabic-speaking individuals and cultural figures in Spanish teaching materials.
• Studies analysing alternative responses and discourses formulated by speakers, families, teachers and other social actors will also be relevant.

This section will bring together empirical studies drawing on diverse corpora, contexts and methodologies, including discourse analysis, critical sociolinguistics, the multimodal approach and the analysis of teaching materials. Contributions that explicitly articulate the relationship between their data and their interpretations, define the communities and linguistic varieties under study, and carefully distinguish between linguistic, national, cultural and religious affiliations will be particularly valued. Taken together, the articles will provide a better understanding of how the place of Arabic in Spanish society is negotiated and what its study contributes to debates on language education, migration, citizenship and sociolinguistic justice.

Finally, in this thematic section, priority will be given to empirical studies of a qualitative, quantitative or mixed nature, in line with the approach of the Nebrija Journal of Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching. Contributions are expected to be based on a systematic collection of empirical data on real-world practices, discourses or materials and, through explicit procedures of analysis and interpretation, to present well-founded and verifiable results. Proposals may be written in any of the languages accepted by the journal.

 

References

Alim, H. S. (2016). Introducing raciolinguistics: Racing language and languaging race in hyperracial times. In: H. S. Alim, J. Rickford, & G. Smitherman (Eds.), Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. 1–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Blanchet, F. 2017. Discriminations : combattre la glottophobie. Paris : Éditions textuel.

Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149–171. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.149

Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2023). Undoing raciolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 27, 421–427. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12643

Khan, K. (2021). Racialized trajectories to Catalan higher education: Language, anti-racism and the ‘politics of listening.’ Applied Linguistics, 42(6), 1083–1096. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amab055

Moustaoui Srhir, A. (2021). Documentos sobre las lenguas amazige y árabe ceutí en Melilla y Ceuta, España (2006). In Del Valle, J; Lauria, D; Oroño, M; Rojas, D. (eds,), Autorretrato de un idioma: crestomatía glotopolítica del español. 499-512. Madrid: Lengua de Trapo.