i

SUNDERLAND UNIVERSITY

Trans-cultural English

A case for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers using patterns of

Islamic terminology in Islamic mono-cultural classrooms

MATESOL

By

Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter

Updated on

21 March 2013

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND SOCIETY

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BenRoyston Publications

BenRoyston Publications is based in Medina KSA.

Jeremy Ben Royston Boulter

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This paper is in the public domain. You may only reproduce it, wholly or in parts, citing the author and the original source.

All rights reserved

First Published 2013

Word count: 13,906

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Preface

Praise be to Allah. We ask His Help and we seek His forgiveness. We seek refuge in

Allah from the evil of ourselves. Whoever Allah guides, there is none to mislead him.

And whoever Allah leads astray, there is none to guide him. I bear witness that there

is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His

messenger. Allah sent him with the Truth as a bearer of good tidings for the last hour.

Whoever obeys Allah the Exalted and His messenger is indeed on the right path, and

whoever disobeys them certainly does harm only to himself and does not injure Allah

in any way.

To proceed:

Declaration

The material contained herein is my own work. The work of others used or

paraphrased in this dissertation, has been recognised according to academic

conventions, and the sources directly quoted have been clearly indicated.

Signed:

Date: 21 March 2013

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v

Dedication

First and foremost I dedicate this work to Allah, the Exalted, subhanahu wa taala,

and to His messenger, the prophet Muhammad, may he be praised and greeted with

peace.

Then to my Mother, Dorothy Lockley, may Allah guide her to the truth, and to my

father Royston Boulter, by whose name Allah commands I be known.

Then to my family: My wife Dalilah Mubarak and my flock of children; Micael, Bia,

Ayoub, Sumayya, Khalid, Haya and Ilyas. May Allah guide them all until death.

Jeremy ben Royston

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

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vii

Abstract

The objective of this study was first to verify and establish that the English speaking

community of Muslims have a bone-fide trans-cultural idiom that fits seamlessly into

their use of English. Secondly, it was to evaluate if Muslim Teachers of English,

whether or not they were native Arabic speakers, consciously or unconsciously

incorporated patterns of Islamic terminology in their teaching, and why. It set out

with the hypothesis that patterns of Islamic terminology are used by Muslim native

English speakers when they speak together. Furthermore, it postulated that Muslim

teachers of English, at least in Saudi Arabia, even if they are converts from the west,

tend to use Islamic idiom with their Muslim students. Finally, it proposed that the

Muslim Saudi student acquires English more easily because the use of shared idioms

broke down barriers between teacher and student, and the students cultural identity

and the English Language. It was argued that this is due to a shared Muslim identity,

which leads to code-switching into religious expressions, etymologically Arabic in

origin, even if the users of the terms are not Arabic speakers. It emerged that there is a

shared trans-cultural identity among English speaking Muslims expressed by

identifiable shared lexical norms, which begged a number of questions: Is this a

teachable English lingua franca that crosses borders and is shared by people of

different mother tongues? Does it contribute to the understanding of how language

can cross over from mono-cultural significance to multi-cultural international use? Is

it justified to train teachers to use it in their meta-language when teaching Muslims?

Will it help Muslim students relate to English, and foster acquisition? This research

revealed that expert English speaking Muslim teachers, whether English is their L1 or

L2, use patterns of Islamic terminology naturally, and subsequently investigated the

attitudes of Muslim teachers towards using them in an academic environment. It

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sought to discover whether the teachers perceived that their deliberate or natural use

helps to reach the Saudi students they are teaching. Its results confirmed the

hypotheses, and recommended the implementation of pilot studies to ascertain

whether Muslim students would benefit from the inclusion of patterns of Islamic

terminology in their English courses or in the conscious and deliberate use of them by

their instructors.

Jeremy Ben Royston

26 February 2013

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Contents

Preface ........................................................................................................................... iii

Declaration .................................................................................................................... iii

Dedication ...................................................................................................................... v

Abstract ........................................................................................................................ vii

Contents ........................................................................................................................ ix

Index of Charts ............................................................................................................. xii

Index of Tables ............................................................................................................ xii

Index of Figures ........................................................................................................... xii

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1: Literature Review ......................................................................................... 7

Global English ........................................................................................................... 7

Local Englishes .......................................................................................................... 9

Trans-cultural Englishes .......................................................................................... 11

Mutual Intelligibility ............................................................................................ 12

Religious Identity ................................................................................................. 13

Islamic Terminology in the Anglosphere ................................................................ 13

The Anglosphere .................................................................................................. 13

Pakistani English .................................................................................................. 14

The Allah Lexicon ................................................................................................... 16

Faith Language ..................................................................................................... 17

The Gap ................................................................................................................ 19

Chapter 2: Method ....................................................................................................... 21

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis: .................................................................... 21

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Research Design ................................................................................................... 21

Data Collection Tools and Administration .......................................................... 22

2.1 Survey: Use of PITs by ELC faculty at Taibah University ............................... 24

Population ............................................................................................................ 24

Objectives ............................................................................................................ 25

Limitations ........................................................................................................... 26

2.2 Interview: The Validity of Using of PITs by ELC faculty in Class .................. 26

Population ............................................................................................................ 26

Objectives ............................................................................................................ 27

Limitations ........................................................................................................... 29

Chapter 3: Results ........................................................................................................ 31

3.1 Survey of ELC Faculty on the Use of APITs .................................................... 31

Salam and Salam Alaykum .................................................................................. 32

Make Salat and Make Wudu ................................................................................ 34

The Allah Lexicon ............................................................................................... 35

Mr (First Name) ................................................................................................... 37

Faculty use of PITs .............................................................................................. 38

3.2 The Interview ..................................................................................................... 40

It is legitimate to use other Inner or Outer Circle Englishes AmE. ..................... 40

It is legitimate to use APITs when teaching AmE. .............................................. 40

I use the Allah Lexicon in class. .......................................................................... 41

I compare the culture behind AmE and Islamic socially integrating language and

manners. ............................................................................................................... 42

Some of my instructors have used the Allah Lexicon in their workshops and

presentations. ....................................................................................................... 43

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The use of Islamic phrases, manners and cultural comparison effects lesson

engagement, class attendance and TL acquisition. .............................................. 43

Chapter 4: Discussion .................................................................................................. 45

Teacher Survey ........................................................................................................ 46

APITs and Identity ............................................................................................... 47

The Allah Lexicon Frequency of Use .................................................................. 49

Other EPITs and APITs ....................................................................................... 49

Mr + First name. .................................................................................................. 50

Using APITs in class ............................................................................................ 51

Interview .................................................................................................................. 51

Limitations ............................................................................................................... 53

Chapter 5: Conclusion .................................................................................................. 57

Summary .................................................................................................................. 57

Recommendations .................................................................................................... 59

References .................................................................................................................... 61

Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 67

Results: Second part of Survey ................................................................................ 67

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Index of Charts

Chart 1: Informal Greeting ........................................................................................... 32

Chart 2: Formal Greeting ............................................................................................. 33

Chart 3: Greetings ........................................................................................................ 33

Chart 4: Collocations with make 1 ........................................................................... 34

Chart 5 Collocations with make 2 ............................................................................ 35

Chart 6: Categories; the population by type ................................................................ 36

Chart 7: Allah Lexicon 1 .............................................................................................. 36

Chart 8: Allah Lexicon 2 .............................................................................................. 37

Chart 9: Mr + (First Name) .......................................................................................... 37

Index of Tables

Table 1: Faculty Population ......................................................................................... 24

Table 2: Male Interview Population ............................................................................ 27

Table 3: ANOVA Male/Female faculty ....................................................................... 31

Table 4: ANOVA Arab/Non-Arab faculty .................................................................. 31

Table 5: Use of APITs conversationally and in class .................................................. 38

Index of Figures

Figure 1. Interactive model of mixed methods ............................................................ 21

Figure 2 The Interview Questions ................................................................................ 27

1

Introduction

Within the community of Muslim English teachers both at Taibah University and on

the LinkedIn online professional social network, there is often frustration when

dealing with course books that explicitly aim to teach English as a foreign language

(EFL) to their Saudi students. Although some of the students may find the culture

bound language being presented useful if they go abroad to study, many of them will

never live in the environment of any of the inner circle countries whose English is

considered the mother of the EFL taught globally as standard international English

(Kachru, 1992).

Even when the course books used on the Preparation Year English Language Program

at Taibah University have ostensibly been honed to match stereotypical requirements

such as no mixing between sexes outside the family circle, and clothes that cover

the entire body for female role models, little or no cinematic or musical references in

order not to cross an area of taboo within strict Muslim culture, and ostensibly

Muslim characters, the language taught is American English, cleansed of all normal

Islamic interactional sociolinguistic practices. The books go as far as to include some

cultural artefacts such as the celebration of eid, the discussion of national days and

descriptions of the hajj to Mecca (McCarthy, McCarten and Sandiford, 2009: 31-41),

although these are largely cosmetic.

The ELC students in the Preparation Year English Language Program are expected to

learn one of the inner circle specific corpuses currently in the database of the

Cambridge International Corpus of English. In their case, as well as those on

Preparation Year programmes at other universities in Saudi Arabia, such as at King

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Saud University in Riyadh, it is a Corpus of North American English (CNAE)

informed course (ibid: iv) that is the institutional learning goal.

Issues with the CNAE

From the experience of teaching in the ELC and interacting with them both, it is

apparent that students and teachers at Taibah University often have issues with this

corpus right from the first lesson. Instead of the customary salaams being exchanged

between the Muslims depicted in the course book, they are seen mouthing the well

known North American social customs of greeting, such as hi! and hello!. Moreover,

the well known Islamic tenet of addressing a person formally by his fathers name is

completely ignored when teaching English titles, so that instead of being taught Mr.

Ahmad AbdulAziz, a student learns to call his classmate Mr. Ahmad Alghamdi, where

AbdulAziz is Ahmads fathers given name and Alghamdi is their tribal affiliation.

This would not be a problem if the characters depicted when such customs are taught

were not both Muslims (by dress and name), but between Muslims, it actually

contradicts a decree in the Quran not to call adopted children the adopting parents

own children (or their tribes children), but to call them (your brothers in religion) by

their own fathers name; [Quran 33:5] (Irving, 2002: 231). This decree is taken to

apply not only to adopted children, but any person, otherwise calling an adopted child

in such a specific instance by his fathers name would not be an issue.

English in the Arab World

Among the rules of the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia is the rule that religion

or politics is neither taught nor discussed in the classroom during English lessons.

This rule was made on religious grounds to protect the students from Christian

missionaries disguised as teachers and Muslim sects from infighting on the one hand,

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and, on more pragmatic political grounds, to prevent unrest against the political

hegemony of the ruling family on the other. The effect of the rule, however, is to

expose the students to the ideological imprint of the coursework being taught. Dr.

Ahmad Issa, from Sharjah University in the UAE, expressed his concern about the

matter in a call for papers when he wrote:

Arabs who use English as a global language have been

touched by [linguistic imperialism] in terms of their

identities, their cultures, and their native language

[because they have been] compelled to survive in a world

of English at the expense of their Arabic language,

culture and identity (Issa, July 21, 2009)

Some Saudi student attitudes towards this linguistic inculcation are not negative. They

feel they must learn standard international English, whether American or British, in

order to compete in the world of commerce industry and global communication

(Elyas, 2008: 45). When the subject is discussed in the presence of Saudi students,

their opinion is often that learning the language will not affect their basic Islamic

culture. Because they are taught Islamic studies from kindergarten to the end of high

school, they feel that learning a foreign language is unlikely to undo what their

religious studies have inculcated. So what is the Muslim teacher going to do to

counteract, to the best of his ability, this subtle imprint of non-Muslim ideology?

Natural Discourse Between Muslims

Many teachers are aware that the English language they speak is threaded with

Islamic terminology even if they are neither Arabic nor bilingual, and many consider

it to be part of their natural sociolinguistic pattern of discourse and conversation.

How does one Muslim greet another, even in the west? asked one colleague. With

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salaams, replied the other. And what does he say if someone sneezes? the enquirer

persisted. Yarhamukullah, if he wants reward from Allah, was the reply.

Research Questions

The use of Islamic terminology by Muslims while speaking English to each other,

even when both are native speakers and converts, raises the question of whether or not

such use can be classified as speaking a variety of English. In addition, if the English

that Muslims use to address each other is global in scale, can it be classified as a

viable additional Islamic English variety among world Englishes, embedded in

standard English vocabulary as well as appropriated foreign borrowings? Or is the

employment of Islamic terminology merely borrowing these foreign language terms

as an unsystematic jargon and dropping them into standard English?

The objective of this research, however, is not to define which category of language

Islamic patterns of terminology belong to, but to establish whether or not Muslim

teachers use them. Furthermore, the study seeks to discover whether speakers of

English as a first acquired language, English as a second language speakers or multi-

language English speakers resist the ideological imprinting on their own speech

patterns and use the Islamic terminology to help their students achieve a balance when

learning a foreign language. This leads to a set of two questions:

1. Do Muslim teachers of English at Taibah University, Saudi Arabia, employ

such Islamic terminology when talking with each other and their students

deliberately, unintentionally or not at all?

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2. Do the teachers think that using patterns of Islamic terminology helps the

Saudi students in the Preparatory Year at Taibah University acquire the target

language?

Establishing the answer to the first of these research questions will underpin the

proposal that using Arabic patterns of Islamic terminology while teaching English

enables Muslim teachers to help their Arabic speaking students appreciate the

difference between their own cultural context (OC) and the target culture (TC) of the

English they are learning, which is investigated in answering the second research

question.

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7

1: Literature Review

One of the questions that must be answered in the context of this enquiry is whether

or not the English Muslims that use with each other is actually a variety of English

already defined, such as Pakistani English (PakE) or Bengali English (Benglish), or if

it is a distinct world English of its own. Where does it fit within the schema of global

English, and does it cut across the barriers that separate established world Englishes?

In this study, the following proposal will be considered:

[The language that English speaking Muslims use fits

loosely into the category of] all those other Englishes

which do not fit the paradigm of an emergent national

standard [that] the notion of world Englishes tends to

leave out (Pennycook, 2007: 22).

Global English

For Crystal (2003: 182), it seems, global English is something quite distinct from

Englishes, which he regards as various dialects strongly influenced by local

languages. He sees global English as an emerging world standard where the language

is negotiated by the people conversing so that mutually unintelligible idioms are

ironed out of the discussion. Picking and choosing the most neutral terminology

creates a language intelligible by all, the superior partner of World Standard (Spoken)

English vs. the Englishes (type x) diglossia (ibid: 189). Even though Crystal

advocates a single standard for international communications, he also recognizes the

local varieties of English, and suggests [Multi-lingual users of English]

will use one spoken dialect, when they are with their

families or talking to other members of their local

community, [which] tends to be an informal variety, full

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of ... local turns of phrase, [and] another spoken dialect

when they are away from home, travelling to different

parts of their country or interacting with others at their

place of work. [The latter] tends to be a formal variety,

full of ... conventional grammar and standard vocabulary.

Those who are literate have learned a third variety, that of

written standard English which ... currently unites the

English speaking world (ibid: 189).

The spoken dialect used at home is defined as a variety of hybrid tongue, (ibid: 162)

including code-switching and imported words from mother tongues or even a

basically foreign language importing many words from English. Crystal (ibid: 164)

gives an example of a formal bank policy statement written in Taglish (Tagalog +

English) quoted from McArthur (1998: 13) where the basic language (Tagalog) is

replete with English banking phrases. Tagalog itself is a creole full of Spanish,

Portuguese and Chinese words, and the addition of English just enriches Tagalog so

it is debatable whether to label the English enriched variety Taglish, or simply refer to

the words adopted from standard global English into the language as English

importations. Similarly, it is problematical calling the patterns of Islamic idiom and

Arabic importations into Muslim communities Muslim English, or ME, even though

the dialect is influenced by patterns of Islamic terminology, or PITs, within Muslim

communities in an environment where British English (BrE) is nationally supreme.

Crystal tends to seek a homogeneous solution to world Englishes, an erosion of

differences that should be kept at a local level, and encouragement of a common core.

Strevens (1992: 42) describes a similar concept to the common core as international

English. The imperialism of American English (AmE) and BrE is thus transferred to

the imperialism agreed between corporate and transnational users of English who

would exclude from their elite company the influence of local cultural norms and

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idioms. How well does such a normative model describe the world? On the one hand,

international trade, political interplay, and the use of technological media for

international communication does indeed seek international norms that are mutually

intelligible, but the use of language more locally, even across such borders as

Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, is by local varieties of English when needed, tied

to similar racial and linguistic identities. This example of normative modelling

(Pennycook, 2007) is an area that Crystal fails to take account of in his two-tier

diglossia neutral standard English for global communication and local English for

communication at home and in the local community. Further tiers need to be added to

account for other cultural influences in language and language use.

Local Englishes

Alistair McArthur, for example, says that [what World English is and might become].

will and should be coloured as much by its interplay

with other languages as by the application of norms from

within which might seek to make its most prestigious

international standard variety less flexible and absorptive,

and less able in its turn to pass words and concepts on to

other tongues (McArthur, 1999: 402).

For McArthur, New Englishes are not inferior partners of a diglossia, but vibrant

contributors to what English used globally will eventually become. He describes a

local Englishs natural state as operating in an environment where stability and flux

go side by side, centripetal and centrifugal forces operating at one and the same time

(McArthur, 1998: 2), and where there are no easily definable characteristics of lexis,

grammar and phonology or clear boundaries (Crystal, 2003: 165).

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Worldwide communication centres on Standard English,

which, however, radiates out into many kinds of English

and many other languages, producing clarity here,

confusion there, and novelties and nonsenses everywhere.

The result can be often is chaotic, but despite blurred

edges, this latter-day Babel manages to work McArthur

(1998: 168).

McArthurs view seems more pluralistic than that of Crystal. Yet, like Crystal, there

seems to be a vision of English evolving as a whole. The different contributions,

instead of diverging, converge. This is nearly the opposite view to that taken by

Kachru (1992) in The Other Tongue and by others in chapters of the same volume

(Lowenberg; Smith; Sridhar & Sridhar; Stevens). To Kachru (1992: 356), English is

very much aligned to national identities and institutionalised varieties of language. He

talks of an inner-circle of native English countries with British English at the centre,

American English as its antagonist and partner, and Australian, Canadian and New

Zealand Englishes as their fully fledged children. Outer-circle Englishes derive from

the inner core, but are appropriated by the nations in which they are spoken as intra-

languages (Strevens, 1992: 42). These nations use English as either the official

language or one of the official languages, but it tends to be spoken by bilinguals or

multilinguals rather than monolinguals (Kachru, 1992: 2). As such, the local national

culture becomes ingrained in the lexical, phonological and, to a lesser extent,

grammatical patterns of spoken English. Sridhar & Sridhar (1992: 91), refer to such a

variety of English as indigenous. Furthermore, these patterns are transmitted to

children as one of their mother tongues, and thus have become a particular type of

second language which others (Platt, 1977; Anderson, 1983, in Sridhar and Sridhar,

1992: 103) refer to as creoloids.

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This model is robust and can be easily studied and tested. Yet it is lacking in

describing language as a cross-cultural developing and ever changing phenomenon.

Instead it advocates additional standard Englishes and consigns developing groups

using English as a second language in the expanding circle to being branded as non-

standard usage (Pennycook, 2007: 21-23). The standard for measuring English has,

according to this model, just increased in dimension.

Trans-cultural Englishes

A more useful tool for studying the way English is globalised is to examine how

subcultural trends spread across the world. In his study on the influence of hip hop on

trans-cultural flows in English, Alistair Pennycook (2007) manages to cut across

nationalistic lines. He sees the popular culture of hip hop, rap and break dancing as

penetrative, adopted especially by youth in a variety of settings. In his introduction to

Global English and Trans-cultural Flows, he asks whether Malaysian song and

dance has to be Malay gamelan or rebana gubi drums, or selat or joget, or lion

dances, or dragon dances or Chinese opera, or Indian Bharatnatyam or Kathakali

dances? Or could hip hop also be Malaysian? (ibid: 4).

The implication Pennycook makes is that language and identity is a result of multi-

layered transactions, locally, regionally and globally. Hip hop is not simply an

imperialistic outflow from America adopted locally, Christianizing and discovering,

civilizing and enlightening, conceptualizing and developing, and corporatizing and

globalizing (ibid: 97), but an artistic engagement that takes the pattern and then

adapts it locally. Input is not just from the artistic source, but also from other

adaptations in the world or preceding forms, a process of transgression and

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resistance, translation and re-articulation, transformation and reconstitution, trans-

localization and appropriation, and trans-culturation and hybridization (ibid: 97).

Pennycook (2007: 22) distances himself both from the pluralistic and imperialistic

normative models of world Englishes, which seek homogeneity or heterogeneity and

mutual intelligibility and stability. Rather, like McArthur, he regards global Englishes

as essentially dynamic and diversifying and destabilizing, forsaking mutual

comprehensibility for local cultural expression, local lexicons and local grammars.

This destabilizing effect is the underlying concept of global Englishes in Pennycooks

theory and is placed in juxtaposition to World Englishes and international standard

English. Therefore, whereas McArthur, would probably add Islamised English, or the

patterns of Islamic terminology (PITs) in local communities, to the same melting pot

of World Englishes as part of the family of Creole like local languages which tend to

diversify from the normative model and from each other, Pennycook would probably

consider it as contributing to a normative modelling theory. Whether the normalizing

is towards English from Arabic or the other way round is a question which will have

to be addressed in a future study.

Mutual Intelligibility

The idea that language and identity is a result of multi-layered transactions, locally,

regionally and globally appears very convincing. However, the celebration of chaotic

mutually unintelligible diversity rather than cross-cultural intelligibility and

communication seems to be a step away from English used internationally. McKay

(2002: 38) argues that the distinguishing feature of an international language is that it

is capable of communicating intelligibly across cultural borders, whether that be

within different communities inside a country, regional communities of English

speakers on an international level, or between them and the global society of English

13

users for international purposes. If one culture is to communicate with another, a

doorway has to be built. In this study, the doorway is the English language.

Religious Identity

Mutual intelligibility, however, is not just enhanced by sharing local indigenous

languages, but is also enhanced between people of the same religion, such as

Muslims, with often widely different nationalities, by the use of patterns of Islamic

terminology between one local community and another. Can this doorway therefore

be classified as one of the many world Englishes? Rather, this study is in basic

agreement with Pennycook who observes that the paradigm of world Englishes as

nationally standardised forms of the English language excludes other Englishes that

do not fit that description. For this reason, instead of seeking to name a new variety

of English such as Islamic or Muslim English, this study will use the term APITs to

refer to Arabic phrases, whether Anglicised or merely transliterated, adopted into

Englishes (and other languages), and EPITs to refer to the English terminology that

use these Arabic phrases as referents. When the term PITs is used without the prefixes

E or A, it refers to both types of phrases and terminology.

Islamic Terminology in the Anglosphere

The Anglosphere

On his website, Dr. Rod Blackhirst (2007) uses the term the Anglosphere to refer to

countries that use English as a native language. These countries often are perceived to

be the inner circle of English speaking countries, as Kachru (1992: 356) grouped

them, but actually includes of many world Englishes in the outer circle where English

is a first language or one of at least two languages spoken by bilinguals. Islamic

terminology can be classified as a world English, or rather a world idiom, as much of

14

its vocabulary is in use across the spectrum of world Englishes and even in other

languages. Many resist the idea that Islamic English is a viable living language, and

see Islamic terminology as foreign jargon inserted into the dominant variety of

English wherever it is spoken.

However, this is not the case in practice. Even when English words are used to

substitute Arabic jargon, the concept communicated by the English lexis used is that

each of the replacement words for a particular foreign Arabic loanword is the

denotation of that loanword. Thus the words are suspended from their natural

environment and placed into the Islamic environment of a comprehensible English

tongue adequate to Muslim needs.

Pakistani English

In his study, Mahboob (2009) notes:

[In] 1947, when Pakistan and India gained independence

from the British, the English language had become so

entrenched in the socio-political fabric of the region that it

was retained as an official language in both countries

(ibid: 178).

He then goes on to say how the language has taken on a local aspect by appropriation

of its terms and adaptations of patterns of discourse, developing into a bone-fide

Pakistani English, or PakE, recognised with increasing pride by the people who use it

(ibid: 181). In his literature discussion Mahboob talks about the lexical and semantic

features of PakE, especially in relation to an earlier study (Baumgardner et al. 1993)

which identifies forty-four categories of Islamic borrowings including administrative

posts (amir, nazim, etc.), concepts (hadith, zina, etc.), education (iqra, maktab, etc.),

and marriage (halala, nikah, etc.) (Mahboob, 2009: 182). He goes on to discuss two

15

terms used in PakE that go beyond the explanations of the previous study, purdah and

inshallah. The Persian word purdah is associated with the Arabic word harem, which

refers to a place that segregates women in a safe zone where outsiders are forbidden.

Yet in PakE, the meaning is stretched to cover terms such as ban, disempowered or

retreat. More traditionally, it can also mean veil in phrases that signify to cover-up or

conceal an action, event or fact, as in politicians who draw a purdah over quarrels

(ibid: 182). As an example of pragmatics, Mahboob (2009: 184) also discusses insha-

Allah (God willing), which he identifies as occasionally being used as means of

polite refusal or a non-committing promise. He lists three pragmatic functions as

showing a desired outcome whilst shedding the assumption of power to make it

happen (all power is with Allah), and any responsibility for action towards making it

happen. In fact, expressing that a future event occurs only by Allahs will in Islam is

not supposed to relieve a person from determination to see it happen, but to

acknowledge that the fulfilment of ones intention is attributed to Allah, and not His

means (oneself).

Mahboob (ibid: 184-187) then presents a case study of discourse structure which

focuses on the introductions of some of the educational textbooks in Pakistani schools

and the acknowledgements found in dissertations presented by Pakistani university

students. The Sindh Textbook Board purposely emphasises the brotherhood and

primacy founded in Islamic tradition with the use of iconic Quranic phrases such as

the basmallah ( ) in Arabic script. He identifies this as the inculcation

of an Islamic ideology and identity within the educational curriculum promoted by the

textbook authorities. In the specific texts Mahboob analysed, he found that the authors

dignified Islam in both cases. The biography of a Sindhi poet, for instance, at first

acknowledged Islam as the religion of peace and brotherhood, then a past Islamic

16

ruler of Sindh as the epitome of Islamic enlightenment, and only after that did he

mention the poet in the third paragraph of the introduction (ibid: 186). The

dissertation, on the other hand, began by acknowledging Allah as the source of

guidance, and praised and thanked Him for His help. Only then did the author

mention his tutors from the second paragraph of his dedications onward (ibid: 187).

The basmallah and acknowledging my debt to Allah are also a characteristics of this

dissertation.

The Allah Lexicon

The first objective of this study is not only to establish the use of Patterns of Islamic

Terminology in English, but also to propose that there exists, contrary to the opinion

of Morrow and Castleton (2011: 325), an Islamised version of the English language

that is used by at least some English speaking Muslims. Due to the approximation of

culture between foreign Muslim teachers, whether from the Arab or Asian world or

from the West, this study also proposes that using APITs in the EFL classroom helps

the Muslim student bridge the gap between their Islamic culture and the culture

reflected in the standard forms of English, usually British or American, taught to

them.

There is a paucity of academic papers written on the subject of using spoken (Arabic)

Islamic phrases in English. One such study describes the use of such phrases as the

Allah Lexicon (ibid: 307-334), and is one of a series of papers in Global English and

Arabic (Ahmad Al-Issa and Leila Dahan, 2011). Behind the book is the deep concern

of academics that the UAE in particular, and the Arab world in general, is losing both

Arabic, and through that loss, Arabic culture within the Arab world, that is: the

Middle East and North Africa. A second study from Griffith University (Almansour,

17

2010), looks at a case study with a caucus of non-Arabic speaking Muslims using the

Allah Lexicon in social conversation. This differs from the caucus of Castleton and

Morrow, which consisted of 93% ethnic Arabic speaking Arabs, half of which were

Arabic nationals studying in the U.S.A.

Faith Language

Morrow and Castleton (2011) have researched how Arabs use words with the name of

God in them in everyday conversation. In a world where Arabic is being pushed into

the background in the educational institutions of many of the Arabic homelands, does

the lack of formal education in Arabic and the encouragement of the use of English

diminish the frequency of using faith language? Morrow and Castleton found that

faith language is still used by mature Arabs when speaking in Arabic. However, the

phrases which were used by over 90% of the respondents when speaking Arabic, such

as Insha Allah, Allah yakhlif; Alhamdulillah; Bismillah; Allah yahfadh, tended to be

dropped by more than 95% of these Arabic speakers when they spoke English to non-

Muslims.

Although only 4% of Arabic Muslims in their caucus used the Allah Lexicon when

talking to non-Muslims, it was also found that the majority of them integrated them

into their speech when talking to other Muslims in English (ibid: 320). This tendency

to use the Allah Lexicon between English speaking Muslims is reflected in another

content analysis by Bader Saleh Almansour (2010) of a short conversation between

three Muslims living Australia, an Indonesian and an Indian Australian who both

spoke English as a second language, and one South African whose first language was

English. He found that they displayed no awkwardness in inserting four of the phrases

from the Allah Lexicon into their conversation. They formed a natural part of their

conversation. Although the analysis focuses on just one short conversation between

18

only three Muslims, the mere fact that these three Muslims use the Allah Lexicon

easily integrated into their language indicates that it is a normal way of speaking for

them, and probably extends to each of their circles of Muslim acquaintances. More

importantly, although there is a theory (Hudson, 1996; Brown and Attardo, 2005) that

code-switching occurs between members belonging to the same language

community (Almansour 2010: 45), the code switching into Arabic among the group

Almansour studied was not from English to their native language, but into a language

none of them spoke: Arabic. This natural use of APITs by Muslims in a western

environment contrasts to one of the statements made by Morrow and Castleton (2011:

325) that attempts by Muslim converts from the West to Islamise English have thus

far failed.

One statistic that does support Morrow and Castletons contention that integrating

English into Arabic reduces the amount of the Allah Lexicon used, even in translation,

is that only 50% or fewer of the children belonging to those surveyed could actually

read or write Arabic, while a higher percentage, just over half of them, could read and

write English. Furthermore, the parents of the children were able to notice that their

children used fewer of the Allah phrases and not so much of the time (ibid: 321).

Maybe due to this observation, 95% of the people surveyed felt Arabic, not English,

should be the language of instruction in schools (ibid: 329). In Saudi Arabia, however,

the instruction of most subjects in English, except Arabic and Religion, is standard

policy, backed by findings that young Saudi students felt it does not undermine their

traditional values. It was reported that [The students] agree that learning English is

neither an indication of Westernization nor entails an imitation and admiration of

Western cultural values (Al-Haq and Smadi, 1996: 313).

19

Morrow and Castleton question this finding because they have observed that non-

Arabs coming into Arab countries, even for short periods, tend to pick up the habit of

saying inshallah and other very common APITs.

The Gap

Although the above study has some bearing on the response of Muslim faculty to the

question of how using APITs helps the students approach English, the fact that 93%

of its respondents were Arabs means the way native English Muslims use PITs in the

community, at work or when they are teaching is not reflected in it. This study seeks

to close that gap. The next chapter, inshallah, deals with the methodology, caucus and

procedures of the research undertaken herein.

20

21

Chapter 2: Method

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis:

In this research a mixed methods approach was used to analyse Patterns of Islamic

Terminology used by Muslim teachers.

Research Design

Mixed methods research ... is becoming increasingly

articulated, attached to research practice, and recognized

as the third major research approach or research paradigm,

along with qualitative and quantitative research (Johnson;

Onwuegbuzie; Turner 2007: 113).

Within a single study, mixed methods research usually involves a linear mix,

beginning with a quantitative analysis followed by a qualitative one. When these are

separated by time, the former is designed to inform the latter.

The model of the integrated research cycle often used in government social and labour

services departments (Olsen, 2004: 114) suggested the diagram presented in Figure 1

Figure 1. Interactive model of mixed methods

22

on how integrated inductive and abductive interpretation can dialectically interact in

the process of investigation.

Quantitative methods are often regarded as more scientific, open to statistical analysis

of a hypothesis through SPSS or Excel and inductive or deductive reasoning for

interpretation. Qualitative methods are generally more subjective, providing, as it

were, a bottom up viewpoint on any topic, throwing retrospective light on an issue by

generating new hypotheses through abductive inference. This interaction between

research methods (a mixed methods investigation approach) is what was sought in the

following research.

Data Collection Tools and Administration

The study consisted of two types of data collection tools: a Quantitative and

Qualitative Mixed-methods Questionnaire and a Qualitative Interview. In all cases,

the respondents were asked if they objected to answering the questions of the survey

or interview. Permission was required and obtained to distribute the surveys to female

faculty as there is a strict segregation protocol based on gender at Taibah University.

The respondents were informed that the data would be confidential and anonymous.

The principle tool for gathering information from faculty was a survey questionnaire.

Most of the questionnaire was designed for quantitative analysis, although two

questions elicited reasons for certain choices and one asked the faculty member to

elaborate on choosing none of the objects offered, and therefore enriched the survey

qualitatively. The main body of the survey consisted of measuring the frequency that

respondents, who were faculty members of the ELC at Taibah University used Arabic

Islamic terms in English. It used a 5 point Likert Rating Scale from never to very

often for each of the 10 Islamic idiomatic terms offered for this purpose. Secondary to

23

this were two questions. The first concerned whether the faculty members used the

Islamic terms in class and, if so, whether they did so intentionally or unintentionally.

A negative response required an explanation as to why not. The second question

sought the respondents opinions on whether the Islamic terms offered constituted

Arabic L1 or L2 insertion into English, and/or if they systematically integrated the

Islamic terms that formed part of the English language they used into their speech. No

Opinion on these three choices required an explanation as to how they would

alternatively classify the terms.

The qualitative tool consisted of recorded interviews which not only explored

respondents general view on using Arabic patterns of Islamic terms, but also the

effect using them in class had on student engagement with their teachers and class

activities, on their class attendance and on their acquisition/learning of the English

language. The questionnaire consisted of four previewed questions, which were given

to the faculty members who agreed to be interviewed. A fifth unseen question was

held in reserve specifically regarding the effect that using APITs on the students had.

The reason they did not preview this question was so that more spontaneous input

could be elicited than from the questions informants had prepared themselves for. The

first four questions were open questions to be answered as the informants understood

them. The final question, however, required that they specifically answered the

question in a restricted manner on the three criterion the researcher was interested in;

namely, engagement of the students, student attendance and student acquisition of the

target (English) language. The ten faculty members interviewed were all males due to

the strict segregation protocol already mentioned, and each was conducted separately

during office hours in the teachers resource room, and recorded on a Sony Walkman

USB recording device. Although respondents nationality and L1 were noted and

24

correlated to the interview number, the interviews were conducted anonymously in

order to encourage them to speak more freely.

2.1 Survey: Use of PITs by ELC faculty at Taibah University

Population

The ELC faculty members at Taibah University were chosen as the population for this

study because they were all Muslim and provide a cross-section of nationalities that

included westerners. These westerners included people with immigrant roots from

Africa, Asia and the West indies, natives of European and American background, and

born and converted Muslims. Non-Westerners embraced Arabs from various countries

across the Middle-East and North Africa (including one Saudi) as well as

representatives of Indonesia, Pakistan and India. Table 1 demonstrates how the

respondents to the survey were divided.

Table 1: Faculty Population

If such a broad cross section used PITs while communicating in English, there would

be a case for regarding their use as part of the family of world trans-cultural languages

25

(i.e. a type of World English). Not only was there a broad range of nationalities and

ethnic origins, but the faculty members were neatly divided into teachers of men and

teachers of women, the former being male and the latter female.

To simplify the mixed range of possible classes of people, the population was

classified for analytical purposes as either non-Arab citizens or Arab citizens, as well

as divided by gender. Female faculty members worked for the ELC at the Al -Salam

Campus and male faculty members worked for the same department at Abyar Ali

Campus, Taibah University, Saudi Arabia.

Objectives

The primary objective of the questionnaire was to assess teachers use of PITs and

why they used them. The second objective was to find out if there were any practical

and motivational differences according to gender or according to nationality,

particularly between non-native Arab speakers of English and native speakers of

English. Specifically, was there a difference in the frequency of using PITs between

males and females? Did non-Arabic speakers use APITs more or less frequently than

native Arabic speakers? How did they see using APITs: as first language interference

or naturally Islamised English? Additionally, the third objective was to investigate

whether they used PITs deliberately in class with their students and the reasons for

doing so if they did.

The frequency model of vocabulary learning is the idea

that words are learnt broadly in order of their frequency

(Brown, 2012: 20).

The design of the survey was based on an intuitive interpretation of the frequency

model of vocabulary learning. Brown (ibid) mentions that a few studies have

confirmed the model, but that order or ease of learning new lexical items do not

26

always follow the model. In his critique of Brown, Tanaka (2012: 5) suggests that

there were two domains of language acquisition: the domain-general lexicon and the

domain-specific lexicon. The former referred to the basic shared lexicon used

commonly between interlocutors, but the latter denoted words that are subject to

thematic ranges which differ according to ones interests and concerns (ibid: 5).

What is suggested, here, is that people integrate specialist vocabulary into their

common vernacular according to the frequency with which they encounter the lexical

items in everyday life.

Limitations

One of the limitations of the survey was that the data it collected did not reflect the

opinions of a homogeneous group. Differences in gender opinion were obscured by

national, ethnic and cultural differences. The backgrounds of most of the members of

faculty were diverse, and some of the Muslim cohort were converts, others born

Muslim, and others had become secular in outlook. It was not, therefore, the

differences that were sought out, but the similarities.

2.2 Interview: The Validity of Using of PITs by ELC faculty in Class

Population

The male informants were chosen for interview according to three criteria: the balance

of ethnicity between Arab/non-Arab informants, their willingness to be interviewed

and their availability. All informants were male from the Abyar Ali Campus due to

the gender segregation policy in Saudi Arabia. Table 2 gives details of their number

and nationality.

27

Table 2: Male Interview Population

Twelve faculty members agreed to be interviewed, but only ten actually were due to

interference from rescheduling a staff meeting concerning the semester final exams.

Objectives

The main objective of the interview was to establish if the teachers thought using

PITs, especially APITs in class helped students to engage with the lessons given and

acquire the target language (TL). Secondary issues, such as the validity of using other

than the TL to teach the TL, was also considered relevant.

Figure 2 shows the four previewed questions, one of which has a built in follow up

question in an attempt to focus the attention of the informant on the topic of the

interview. This was followed by a fifth surprise question that comprised the interview.

The latter sought the main response in order to answer the third and last research

question. The open ended style of interview was designed to elicit real opinions and

insights from the informants.

Figure 2 The Interview Questions

Previewed Questions:

Explain why it is or is not legitimate to use English other

than American English when teaching your students

(corpus informed) North American English.

28

The Interview Questions (continued)

If you use the Allah Lexicon, that is words and phrases

that are collocated with the name of Allah, what effect do

you think it has on the students you teach?

If you have experienced being a student or trainee of

instructors or trainers using the Allah Lexicon in their

presentations and workshops, how did you find the

experience?

How do you make comparisons between the North

American socially integrating language and the culture

behind it, which you teach from the Conversation

Strategies in lesson 3 of every unit, and the language

Muslims use in their place (where appropriate) to show

Islamic manners? If you do not, why not?

Unseen Question.

Does the use of Islamic phrases, manners and cultural

comparison help your students learn English? Please

consider the following areas:

a. engagement with the lessons in class

b. attendance

c. acquisition of the target language

However, it follows the deductive interview paradigm (Brenner, 2006: 361) in that the

questions are consistent for every informant and focus more and more upon the

outcome sought, which was the answer to how using Islamic PITs and cultural

comparison help the Saudi student acquire the TL.

29

Limitations

The interview questions were deliberately open to elicit the true unprompted opinions

of the members of faculty. More guided questions may have reduced the quantity of

information elicited. The last question, which forced the respondent to summarise his

ideas as directly related to the third hypothesis question, helped to mitigate the excess.

The silent interview technique may have also helped shorten the responses. On the

other hand, the richness of the replies may also have been affected.

30

31

Chapter 3: Results

3.1 Survey of ELC Faculty on the Use of APITs

The multi-factor ANOVA variance test was used to evaluate whether the differences

in usage of the PITs between males and females and between Arabs and non-Arabs

were significant. According to Table 3, there exists no significant variance within the

genders each considered separately as f

32

pattern. In the case of how the factors interact, there is a much stronger positive

variance. It is this difference, the interaction of PITs with the types of users according

to gender and ethnicity, that will be presented below.

Salam and Salam Alaykum

Both salam and salam alaykum are used to greet other Muslims. However, there is a

significant difference overall on how frequently each term is used. In charts 1-8, the

letter T stands for total number of participants in the survey. The two letter

combinations (vo ne) stand for the frequencies very often, quite often, some-times

(sometimes), hardly ever (rarely), and not ever (never).

Out of the population of 34 respondents, 56% use the term salam very often, whilst

21% use it quite often. That means almost three quarters of the population use the

term often, where often combines the results of very often and quite often.

Chart 1: Informal Greeting

This contrasts with the use of salam alaykum, the fuller, more formal greeting. 82% of

the respondents said they used the latter term very often, and a further 9% said they

used it quite often, which indicates that nine from ten of these Muslims use the term

often. Furthermore, not one respondent said they never used salam alaykum whilst

two of them said they never use salam on its own.

33

Chart 2: Formal Greeting

The main difference between the two APITs is that 100% of the women said they

used the full greeting very often, compared to 38% who said they used the abbreviated

form only quite often or even less frequently. One woman even said she never used

salam on its own, and so did one man.

Chart 3: Greetings

When the specific categories are compared, we see that only 50% of the women,

whether Arabs or Inner Circle English speakers (ICEs) use salam as well as salam

alaykum. However, the other 50% of the Arabic speakers do use salam sometimes or

more often than that, while 50% ICEs hardly ever or never use it. Less extremely,

Arab males use the full greeting very often twice as often as quite often (50% and 25%

34

of the time), but use the shorter version very often just as often as quite often (37%-

38% of the time). Male ICEs also tend to use salam alaykum more often than salam,

though in general both are used often, about 87% of the time.

Make Salat and Make Wudu

Chart 4 compares the collocation of make with salat and wudu.

Chart 4: Collocations with make 1

It is clear that the use of make with wudu is a much more popular term than make with

salat. Every category gradually decreases their use of make wudu from very often to

sometimes except for the women, who have two respondents saying they use it

sometimes and one who says she uses it quite often.

Never-the-less, significantly more women said they used it very often than men, and

every women who said quite often or sometimes was Arab. It is also noticeable that

more Arab men said they use the term make wudu quite often or sometimes than

English as L1 speakers.

On the other hand, the frequency with which every category said they use make salat

is variable, though more Arabic as L1 speakers tend not to use the term than English

as L1 speakers, and twice as many men said they never used it than women did.

Overall, however, the frequency the term is used decreases from very often to never,

35

the difference being in the number of respondents (8) saying they hardly ever or never

said make salat.

In terms of those who said make wudu, as can be seen in Chart 5, 100% of the non-

Arab women said they did so very often as well as 57% of the male English L1

speakers, whereas less than 40% of the Arab men also said they did very often. The

figure for saying make salat very often drops to 0% of the Arab men, but 50% or more

Chart 5 Collocations with make 2

of the non-Arab men and women and a third of the Arab women, continued to say

they say it very often or quite often. Never-the-less, half the Arab men also said they

say it quite often.

The Allah Lexicon

Most of the APITs containing the word Allah are used by both men and women,

Arabic L1 and English L1 speakers alike. The following charts demonstrate the

insignificant differences between the categories of speakers. Where there is a

difference, it was whether or not there was anybody who claimed they never used it.

Where that is the case, it was always an Arab male that did so.

36

The other place frequency differed was in whether the user used an APIT very often or

quite often. Arab L1 speakers and English L1 speakers differed slightly where this

occured.

Chart 6: Categories; the population by type

Yarhamakellah is often used in response to Hamdulillah, so it is not surprising that the

overall frequency profiles in Chart 7 are similar.

Chart 7: Allah Lexicon 1

They differ in that three Arabs, two men and one woman, said that they either hardly

ever or never used the term. Generally, the number of respondents who said they used

Yarhamakellah very often diminishes by four from their usage of Hamdulillah, and

this number is evenly distributed between men and women. It is also apparent that the

overall frequency with which the respondents spoke the phrases falls gradually from

very often to hardly ever.

In Chart 8, the most frequently used APIT was maashallah, and the least frequently

used one was subhanallah.

37

The frequency in which non-Arabs and women in general used the terms follow this

general trend. However, the trend for both men in general and Arabs was somewhat

different for both jazakellahkhayr and subhanallah.

Chart 8: Allah Lexicon 2

Both show the frequency as evenly distributed between quite often (or more

frequently than that) and sometimes (or less frequently), the lesser frequency

correlating with the decreasing frequency with which men in general used the terms.

Mr (First Name)

Chart 9 demonstrates a completely different frequency trend to the other charts.

Chart 9: Mr + (First Name)

Whereas the other charts showed a tendency for Arabs, and in particular males, to use

the APITs less frequently than English L1 speakers, this chart shows the opposite. For

38

both male and female Arabs, the frequency of using Mr+first name is around 38% for

sometimes, and nearly as often for quite often. About a quarter of each sex said they

used it very often, too. None of the Arab men said they never or hardly ever used the

term, but 10% of the Arab women did.

In comparison, there was a difference of opinion among the English L1 female

speakers, who said that they hardly ever or never used the EPIT, devided evenly at

50% each. Among the English L1 speaking men, however, only 22% agreed that they

hardly ever used it, whilst the remaining follow a similar trend to the Arab women.

The speakers of other languages were distributed evenly among all the opinions, and

therefore bear no significant difference or correlation with the other types of speakers.

Faculty use of PITs

According to Table 5, nearly all the faculty in the ELC at Taibah University use

APITs in everyday conversation.

Table 5: Use of APITs conversationally and in class

39

Only three respondents, one Arab and two non-Arabs, said that they did not. Despite

two of the faculty saying that they had a non-Arab nationality 26% of the population

said that APITs were part of their natural L1. Another 35% said that APITs were their

L2 while they were speaking English, despite three of these being Arabs. A much

larger percentage, 68%, including some of the above faculty, said that APITs were

Islamic terms they had integrated into their natural English, that is, part of the English

that they spoke naturally.

Only 12%, devided evenly between Arabs and non-Arabs, said that none of the

descriptions of APITs above described the terms. One lady said they are words

which are used as a simple means of understanding what is meant in a quick form,

but none of the other three respondents offered an explanation of what they thought

they were. Just as many faculty as used the APITs in everyday conversation said that

they used it in class. Most of these said they used them unintentionally because they

came out naturally in certain contexts.

Fewer non-Arabs controlled their speech in order not to use the terms than Arabs, as

is borne out by the figures above. They show that 13% of the Arabs deliberately did

not use APITs, while only 6% of the non-Arabs intentionally refrained. On the other

hand, 50% of the non-Arabs who used APITs in class did so deliberately, whereas

only 33% of the Arabs used the terms intentionally. Most of the respondents agreed

that they did so to make the students feel more relaxed and receptive while learning.

Three other opinions were also expressed. One man wrote that it was part of his faith

to return affairs back to Allah, praise Him, thank Him and so on, whilst a woman

claimed that one of her goals was to include a religous objective. Another woman

thought that translations did not carry the exact meaning of the APIT, and that an

40

Arabic term required an automatic response which enabled another person to get

blessings. She gave two examples:

When I say salam alaykum the other person can respond

with the like or more, and if I say hamdulilah when I

sneeze, they can respond and I can respond to them back

[to garner even more reward from Allah].

The three respondents who said they did not use APITs (9%) did not give a reason

why the did not even though they were asked.

3.2 The Interview

The interview was divided up into six statements derived from five questions. The ten

interviews are annexed with the dissertation.

It is legitimate to use other Inner or Outer Circle Englishes AmE.

Four out of ten said it was legitimate to use BrE instead of AmE, as these two were

the main forms of standard English and the forms most students wanted to hear. The

other six allowed the use of the teachers own variety of English in teaching, although

three of these advocated that the language they actually taught should be the

standardised target language.

It is legitimate to use APITs when teaching AmE.

Two informants thought using APITs was not legitimate as APITs and English just

did not mix well. One of them suggested that students needed the maximum exposure

to English because they need to be able to use it with non-Muslims. The other said

that Arabic and English were different languages linguistically speaking, so their

origin should be indicated if the original Arabic expressions were used because they

41

were not English; it would be better if the Islamic expressions they wanted to use

were translated.

All the others felt it was legitimate to use APITs and the Allah Lexicon. Four of them

said that it was natural for Muslims to use these expressions, and one actually felt it

was obligatory to do so because they were decreed by Allah and His messenger in

Arabic. Another felt, that the original meanings would be lost in translation. Two

informants remarked that English was an adoptive language that often took words of

foreign origin into its lexicon, and that Islamic terms, at least between Muslims, had

become natural English expressions. Three informants said that it was legitimate to

use them with Muslim students in Saudi Arabia because it made them more

comfortable and put them at ease.

I use the Allah Lexicon in class.

All but one said they used the Allah Lexicon in class. According to one person:

if you remember Allah in every conversation frequently,

then Allah will protect you, be with you (interview 9).

Therefore using the Allah Lexicon helped the students feel more secure and positive,

and consequently relaxed. Another person said that it lowered the fear of culturally

brainwashing the students unintentionally, but did not hinder the learning of English.

In fact, the students appreciation of the values behind APITs helped them understand

target language phrases when they saw that the two cultures could go hand in hand.

Most agreed that using the Allah Lexicon with the students put them at ease, creating a

bond between student and teacher. It commanded their respect and enhanced the

teachers relationship with them. Several informants mentioned that students liked to

42

hear the Allah Lexicon from native English speakers; it kept the shared Muslim

culture alive.

I compare the culture behind AmE and Islamic socially integrating language

and manners.

Two of the informants felt that what needed to be explained is the American cultural

significance and use. The first felt that literal meanings of sinful words used in

everyday expressions should be played down, such as in the expression I bet,

meaning I think something is true or will occur. Another felt that body language

should be corrected so that culturally acceptable American directness be encouraged

instead of the polite indirectness of Arabic culture.

More generally, encouraging students to see correlations between Arabic expressions

and English ones was advocated. Three of the informants, all Arabs, agreed that many

American expressions had direct equivalences, down to discursive markers, in Arabic,

and one person gave several examples. Two felt that the use of equivocal expressions

in English should be avoided, and that students should be warned of the inappropriate

content of some of the expressions especially if the matter involved distortion of

tawheed (pure monotheism). Another two informants indicated they would not advise

the students to avoid or adopt English expressions, or use APITs in their stead. Rather,

they would simply point out the cultural problems and correlations, and leave the

choice of discourse strategies entirely to the learner. One person, however, indicated

there was an ideological battle going on between, on the one hand, the viewpoint of

Christian advocates and, on the other, that of Muslim defenders of the faith. He said:

The crusaders are spreading western Christian ideology.

We have to counter it by teaching the use of English as a

43

Muslim language that propagates Muslim ideology

(interview 3).

He advocated highlighting differences in culture in order to bolster the students

against ideological brainwashing.

Some of my instructors have used the Allah Lexicon in their workshops and

presentations.

All but one of the informants agreed that they noticed trainers using the Allah

Lexicon, though two of these were indifferent about hearing them. They said it did not

enhance either their relationship with the trainer or their understanding of the

presentation contents. A further two said that it was refreshing and natural, whilst all

the others felt it identified the speaker as Muslim and a brother, bringing them closer

and making them more attractive. Three of the informants had even heard non-

Muslims use the Allah Lexicon in workshops or lectures. While one said it felt false,

as if the presenter was not sincere and was using it as a trick to get closer to his or her

audience, the others both experienced pleasure. One felt it made the lecturers more

approachable and the content of their lectures more digestible, the other felt that it was

possible to approach the speakers as a consequence and invite them to Islam.

The use of Islamic phrases, manners and cultural comparison effects lesson

engagement, class attendance and TL acquisition.

All the informants agreed that there would be a positive effect on engagement in class

if the cultural comparisons were made, and nearly all of them had the same opinion

about the use of APITs. Three ways these two techniques helped the student engage in

the class were mentioned. The first was that their personal perception and relationship

with their teacher would be enhanced through stronger engagement if he appeared to

44

be approachable to them because of their religiously informed cultural congruence.

Secondly, if the teacher contrasted the TC with OC, it engaged their cognitive

awareness of, and curiosity about, cultural differentiation. Finally, where comparisons

threw up similarities, it engaged their interest to discover more about a language that

would begin to seem less foreign as a consequence.

Three informants expressed no opinion about the effect on attendance, whilst two

others said that there would be none. Both of the latter informants then said that the

students might be motivated to come to class because of the rapport that developed

between them and the teacher if he customarily used the Allah Lexicon. The rest of the

informants all agreed that if that relationship was strong between teacher and students,

a bridge would exist, so the students were more likely to want to attend and listen to

their teacher as if he was their parent or older brother. Being comfortable with the

teacher, being able to approach him and liking his character, flexibility and

trustworthiness, would thus increase attendance.

45

Chapter 4: Discussion

This study was undertaken to explore the use of Islamic terminology among Muslim

teachers at Taibah University in Saudi Arabia in particular, and how this relates to the

use of such terminology among Muslims in general; that is, whether or not the use of

patterns of Islamic terms within English belongs to the family of global or world

Englishes. Beyond establishing that patterns of Islamic terms are manifest trans-

cultural linguistic terms that are used in English, this study also sought to investigate

attitudes of the English teachers in the English Language Centre of Taibah University

towards the use of these terms in their daily lives and while teaching, and whether

they felt it has any effect upon their relationship with their students and on the

students connection with the English language and their learning and acquisition of

it. The hypothesis to be tested here had but two tiers. First, Muslim teachers of

English at Taibah University used Islamic terminology naturally in their everyday

speech, and transferred the use of Arabic patterns of Islamic terminology to the

classroom environment. Secondly, teachers consciously used their Islamic cultural

background and command of this terminology to decrease the distance between them

and their Saudi students and thus facilitated the students learning processes.

The objectives of the teacher survey and interviews were, firstly, to measure the

frequency of the use of ten patterns of Islamic terms, six of which were transferred

Arabic terms. Five of these terms were from the Allah Lexicon. A further two items

were collocations with the verb make, whilst another was a word in the English

dictionary with etymological Arabic roots. The latter word is used informally on its

own and in a phrase more formally, and both patterns were measured. The final item

was a socially significant pattern of naming a person with a title (Mr.) in Arabic

culture. Furthermore, the study was to attempt to establish that Muslim teachers, at

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least in the context of teaching at Taibah University, consciously used their natural

employment of patterns of Islamic terms with students for determinate goals. As part

of this analysis, the following questions were explored: Do teachers attempt to close

the cultural gap between themselves and their students by using Arabic patterns of

Islamic terms? Do the teachers attempt to facilitate learning through cultural

comparison of English and Arabic idiomatic expressions? How does this affect their

relationship with the students, and the students relationship with the target language

(English)?

The following discussion examines whether the Muslim teachers at Taibah University

actually resorted to code switching, and used patterns of Islamic terminology at work

and with their students. Whatever the habitual use of Islamic language in class, if used

at all, did using it help the students come to terms with the culture behind the

language they were learning?

Teacher Survey

Features of this Allah Lexicon are traditionally used by ...

Muslims frequently each day to remember their Lord

(Castleton, 2010: 312).

This research was based on the assumption that Muslims in general, whether Arabic

speaking or not, tend to use Arabic patterns of Islamic terminology, or their English

equivalent, while interacting in English with other Muslims. In other words, it agrees

with the works of Almansour (2010), and Morrow and Castleton (2010), and their

conclusions regarding the Allah Lexicon and its use by Muslims in general.

Castletons caucus was three quarters male and consisted largely of English speaking

Arabs, half of which were resident in the US, the rest being on temporary student

visas. A very small sample (7%) consisted of Pakistan residents, and most were

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Muslim, both practicing and non-practicing (2006: 93). In contrast, this study is

evenly divided on lines of gender and ethnic variation, and only one respondent is a

national of Saudi Arabia.

APITs and Identity

In her study on the decline of the Allah Lexicon, Castleton (2010: 312) says that many

of its features are traditionally used by Arabic-speaking Muslims. However, she

also reports:

While they generally suppressed Allah expressions when

speaking with non-Muslims, they integrate them into their

English when speaking to Muslims, which suggests the

existence of a double discourse: a standard secular English

used with non Muslims, and an Islamic English used with

members of their own community (ibid: 321).

In other words, to Muslims, the many forms and uses of the Allah Lexicon and other

APITs constitute keywords, such as bismiillah and salam alaykum, which course

through the veins of culture or belief systems (Wierzbicka, 1997) in the area of

communication and inter-personal relations.

This opinion reflects that of Almansour (2010), who challenges the notion that code-

switching occurs within communities that are bilingual, proficient in the language

they are speaking and the language they are code-switching to (Wardhaugh, 1992). It

also agrees that a speakers [religious] identity is presented and negotiated by his use

of code-switching (Clemens, 1997; Bailey, 2000). He noted of the participants of his

study that:

[they] were not switching between languages that they

spoke, but ... [into APITs] that they knew (Almansour,

2010: 46).

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Further, more extensive, research is required to establish if this can be generalized

definitively. Never-the less, it seems that the shared lexis of Islamic idiom is tied to

identification of the individual with a group. Pennycook (2007) identifies the idiom of

hip-hop as trans-cultural for this reason, which indicates the use of Islamic idiom by

Muslims speakers of English characterizes it as trans-cultural, too.

The results of the survey confirm that both Arabs and non-Arabs use the twelve PITs

presented in this study, five of which belong to the Allah Lexicon, regularly and

naturally within their standard use of English among Muslims. Furthermore,

Almansour, confirms that four of the Allah Lexicon expressions he analysed were

used freely, integrated into the English of three non-Arab English speaking Muslims

from different parts of the world talking over dinner while living and studying in

Australia. He proposed that if these non-Arabic speaking Muslims of disparate

nationalities used an English peppered with the Allah Lexicon as a mutual lingua

franca, it reflected the identification they had with a common group. He said:

the religious identities of speakers ... [unite and unified]

members from diverse linguistic, socio-cultural, ethnic,

geographic allocations and backgrounds (ibid: 47).

In contrast, Castleton (2010) notes, that there is a tendency not to translate the Allah

Lexicon phrases except where there exists English parallel expressions, such as God

willing for inshaallah, rather than exact translations, but these are by the rare

individual. In fact, only two of the respondents in this current, particular study, both

American, indicated that they would use parallel expressions deliberately on occasion

when speaking to non-Muslims, or when non-Muslims might overhear them, so as not

to appear alien. However, they disagreed with each other on whether they would

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customarily use the APITs when speaking English in a naturally Muslim but English

environment.

The Allah Lexicon Frequency of Use

The frequency of the use of the Allah Lexicon within the APITs largely conform to

that of Castletons study (2006). Of the 32 phrases she used in her study, only two

were used in this one. Alhamd