Positioning Arabic in Schools: Language Policy, National Identity, and Development in Contemporary Lebanon

Abstract

Scholarship on language and society points to language as a significant site for ideological contestation and identity assertion (Suleiman 1996). Contemporary language policy debates in the Middle East are no exception, and they are intimately shaped by broader sociopolitical and economic processes that affect the region. In Lebanon, language policy in education has reflected discourses about national identity and development, implicating formal schooling in religious inequality and sectarian struggle over the last century. Post-civil war peace accords, brought about through the mediation of Arab regional actors in 1989, sought to unify a divided country, in part, by officially asserting Lebanon’s Arab identity and affiliation through constitutional amendments1 and educational reforms. The resultant language policy in education, launched in 1997, undertook the reinstatement of the Arabic language as the common language for all students in Lebanese schools.