Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language Access and Gendered Mobility

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a linguistic anthropological investigation into the relationship between language proficiency and women's economic and social empowerment in multi-language environments. Social scientists have found that even when women have increased access to education and economic opportunities, their mobility may be limited. They may be held back not only by general social and cultural norms but also more particularly by the lack of access to key mobility infrastructures, such as the ability to communicate in a world language, that these norms produce. Without these language skills, they are unable to reach their full potential in globalized economies. This project will look at how women negotiate multi-language situations and under what conditions they are successful in obtaining world language competencies. The research will be carried out in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because it provides a super-diverse multinational setting where English is the crucial conduit for communication and business transactions. The research will be conducted by University of Texas anthropology doctoral student Deina A. Rabie, who is supervised by linguistic anthropologist Dr. Elizabeth L. Keating. Rabie will collect data in domestic, social, educational, and commercial settings, including daily market and service transactions, formal corporate contexts of international business and communication, family gatherings, religious meetings, and classrooms. She will sample and analyze naturally occurring speech; conduct semi-structured interviews; carry out linguistic, spatial, and sonic mappings; analyze relevant media; and consult materials collected in the national oral history of the National Archives of the United Arab Emirates. Findings from this research will contribute to theorizing new dimensions of gender in globalized contexts.