Linguistic diversity and inclusion in the era of COVID-19

Editor’s note: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a renewed focus on linguistic diversity and the way it intersects with social inclusion. In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Sarah Hopkyns examines the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) linguistic landscape to explore the tension between rhetorical valorisation of diversity and English-centric practices. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.

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Jogging along the Abu Dhabi coastline at sunrise, I see small groups of two or three people wearing masks. They are expatriates walking dogs, Emiratis in national dress strolling, fellow joggers escaping lockdown inactivity, and transnational workers clearing fallen date palm leaves from the path. Cautiously wary as I pass each group, I hear snippets of multiple languages being spoken. This is a typically diverse Abu Dhabi scene in highly atypical times.

While Arabic is the official language of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and English is the de facto lingua franca, such labels ‘hide more than they reveal’. Rather, multilingualism and translingual practice is the norm due to its highly diverse population of approximately 200 nationalities, speaking over 100 languages as well as various dialects within diglossic languages such as Arabic. However, power attributed to these languages is far from even. Arabic and English are the most visible in society as reflected in their side-by-side presence on public signage, in education, official channels, and technology. Such a situation results in those proficient in English and Arabic having more access to information than those without. While communication barriers are important to challenge in general, in emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of linguistic inclusion is amplified.

Superdiversity and the year of tolerance in the UAE

In multilingual contexts globally, increasing attention has been given to social justice via the prevalence of the words ‘inclusion’ and ‘tolerance’. Inclusion can be defined as ‘ensuring access for all’ across many sectors. Several inclusion-based government-led initiatives have occurred in the UAE recently. One prominent initiative was the naming of 2019 as the ‘Year of Tolerance’, where all languages, backgrounds, ethnicities and abilities were to be valued. Figure 1 shows the ‘Year of Tolerance Pillars’ prominently displayed on a shopping mall billboard.

The seven pillars advocate tolerance in the areas of education, community, workplace, culture, legislation, and media as well as establishing the UAE as a model of tolerance. Here, the message of inclusivity as an ethical and moral value is loud and clear. However, even with carefully implemented awareness campaigns on diversity and inclusion, an unprecedented crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic can disrupt such efforts, and rather shine a spotlight on pre-existing societal and linguistic inequities. In addition, a crisis leads to priorities shifting from ideal values to emergency messaging, where instinctual and on-the-spot decisions are made with the resources available. This is often the case with linguistic choices in public spaces where English monolingualism seems to be the preferred or default choice in a moment of crisis.

Linguistic inequalities in a crisis context

In the UAE, top-down government communication relating to the COVID-19 pandemic is suitably multilingual and inclusive. Guidelines and announcements appear in Arabic, English, Hindi, Tagalog, French, and many more languages. Neighboring Gulf states such as Qatar and countries further afield such as China have also ensured that official communication is linguistically diverse. However, it is often the bottom-up ad hoc messages in public spaces which are most visible. This is especially the case for the UAE’s large migrant worker population who may not have access to mobile devices like laptops and smartphones.

Linguistic landscaping, or the analysis of language on signage in public spaces, can tell us a lot about how languages are used and about the power certain languages have over others. ‘Every sign tells a story about who produced it, and about who is selected to consume it’, as Blommaert (2018) points out. Public signage tracks local practices as well as contributing to the COVID-19 era’s zeitgeist. In this sense, locally-produced impromptu thrown-together messages are indeed authentic ‘signs of the time’. Such signs act as sociolinguistic evidence of power dynamics existing between languages and their speakers.

In the UAE, while municipality-issued COVID-19-related messages appear in the country’s two dominant languages, Arabic and English (Figure 2), in many cases make-shift or hand-written signs appear in English only. This is similar to other English-dominant multicultural and multilingual contexts such as London and Sydney.

It is easy to see a contrast between permanent signs with English and Arabic side-by-side, such as a working-hours sign in a pharmacy window (Figure 3), and an impromptu COVID-19 sign which appears only in English. In Figure 3, the latter is typed in large capital letters which fill the page, without the use of other languages, perhaps due to the urgency needed in communicating quickly. The pharmacy owner or clerk who created the sign most probably did so with a sense of emergency where lack of time and resources did not allow for consideration of the society’s linguistically-diverse population.

A further example of a make-shift monolingual COVID-19 sign can be seen in Figure 4. Here, lifeguards at an Abu Dhabi beachside community have written a message in the sand warning residents to ‘stay home, stay safe’. The manager who instructed the sign to be made on a scorching mid-March afternoon, decided to use English only. Was this perhaps due to limited space on the beach? Was it deemed impractical to write the message in several languages considering the size of the letters? Whatever the reasoning, the space which could have been used for another version of the message (e.g. Arabic), was instead given to a set of images including a house, heart and the ‘sun cross’ symbol (circle with cross inside) meaning eternity or the spiritual whole.

While the use of ‘English only’ may be appropriate in compounds renowned for ‘Jumeirah Janes’ (pampered British housewives living in English-speaking bubbles), since 2008 such monolingual communities have become less common. The beach community featured in Figure 4, for example, is linguistically diverse with Australians living next to Koreans, and Emiratis neighboring Swedes, as well as many dual nationality families, including my own (UK/Canada). Recently, nationalities which had not previously been drawn to the UAE are arriving for work opportunities. Accompanying family members sometimes have only basic English. For example, the number of Koreans living in the UAE has grown to 13,000 residents in what is known as the ‘Korean wave’. With most expatriate households being double-income, live-in nannies, who are usually from the Philippines, are also part of such communities. Despite the multilingual composition of residents, English is often the sole language used for communication in emergency contexts (Figures 3 and 4).

Inclusivity in crisis communication

Although the beach community shown in Figure 4 is home to mainly mid to high-income professionals, it is also the workplace of hundreds of laborers who are now called ‘essential workers’. Arriving on buses from the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, they spend their days working on the upkeep of existing buildings or on constructing new residential towers whose owners have deadlines to meet in order not to lose certain incentives. Figure 5 shows essential workers cleaning apartment windows while wearing masks but not perhaps social distancing, as is a government mandate. They do not have the ‘luxury’ of self-isolating, as many residents do, and it is clear that the message on the beach (Figure 4) was not intended for their eyes.

Nevertheless, as laborers spend their days at their worksite, the make-shift monolingual signs in shops, lifts and  other public spaces represent their main way of accessing safety warnings. Monolingual communication in contexts of disasters or crisis has been named ‘disaster linguicism’, where linguistic minorities (not necessarily in number, but in power or prestige) are particularly vulnerable due to language-based discrimination at multiple levels.

Concerns over the lack of access laborers may have to COVID-19 warnings have been voiced on community Facebook pages as well as in national newspapers. Such concerns have led some residents to try and bridge the communication gap. For example, Indian expatriate teenager, Suchetha Satish, composed COVID-awareness songs in 21 Indian languages including Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Assamese. The songs urge people to social distance and wash hands. Such efforts are perhaps aimed at offsetting the prominence of monolingual (English) or bilingual (Arabic/ English) signs in public spaces. However, the potential success of such initiatives is debatable, due to many laborers having limited access to certain mediums. Besides, even with access to such songs, social distancing is not often an option in essential worker contexts, as seen in Figure 5.

Linguistic landscaping: An eye-opener for future action

For those without access to official multilingual COVID-19 warnings, gaining accurate information about the crisis through a minority language can be a challenge. This highlights linguistic inequality in relation to crisis communication, as well as putting into sharper focus class divides. In top-down initiatives promoting tolerance, there is a danger of glossing over hidden exclusions in favour of celebrating ‘linguistically flexible neoliberal urbanites’. As most sociolinguistic research in the UAE focuses on the language choices and experiences of Emiratis, transnational linguistic experiences are under-researched, especially those from less privileged groups. In this exceptional time when the slogan ‘We are all in it together’ or ‘#TGether’ (as seen in Figure 2) is advocated, it is important to draw attention to the incongruities between slogans of inclusion and the reality on the ground. As Jones (2020) states, ‘Coronavirus is not some grand leveler: it is an amplifier of existing inequalities, injustices and insecurities’ or as Hurley (2020) puts it, ‘Coronavirus exacerbates the fault lines’. Although this is a time of reflection on what a new normal may look like, ‘often these seemingly revolutionarily happenings ultimately result in retrenchment of a status quo defined by durable inequalities’.

The Year of Tolerance supports including all, even those who speak languages other than English and Arabic. However, the pragmatic choices made at the height of the COVID-19 crisis show English is often the default choice. By excluding some, there are significant ramifications for the spread of the virus. Concerned looks on the faces of the diverse groups described in the opening coastline scene of this blog show us this is an issue affecting society as a whole. Thus, the need to ‘include the reality of linguistic diversity into our normal procedures and processes, including disaster preparation’ is pressing. Going forward, a critical look at the signage and warning messages in our landscapes can be eye-opening, with the goal of substantiating the priority of tolerance and inclusion.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

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