The Lecturer at the Language Center at the Arab American University, Dr. Mujahed Zayed, has participated in the Eighth International Scientific Conference titled “Cognitive Pathways for Humanities and Social Sciences - Reality and Prospects of Leadership,” which was held at the Iraqi University of Wasit in the city of Kut.
Dr. Mujahed Zayed, who represented of the Arab American University, presented a study he conducted in cooperation with international researchers, titled “An Analytical Study of the Motivations of Arabic-English Code-Switching among Young Arabs in Formal and Informal Discourse Settings.” This study aimed to explore the key motivations that drive Arab young people to use code-switching while conducting dialogues with groups of friends at university campuses or at work, as a linguistic phenomenon that has become widespread among young people of different languages and cultures, especially Arabs in the Middle East.
During his participation in the conference, Dr. Mujahed Zayed provided theoretical coverage of the code-switching phenomenon between multiple language pairs, including English and French, Russian and Spanish, English and German, until he ended with a review of the most important features of this linguistic phenomenon between Arabic and English.
The results of the study showed that Arab youth tend to code-switch for several reasons, the most important of which is deliberately using terminology specific to a group with a social or professional relationship without exposing it to individuals from outside this group, as is the case when a group of doctors is in a conversation use Latin terms to prevent the others from understanding what they are conversing. Arabs also use this linguistic phenomenon to show belonging to a specific class or category of society, usually a class characterized by social superiority, in addition to the tendency of a certain group of Arabs to use this phenomenon to confirm their belonging to a specific known group by using terms from other languages of their own, in addition to other motivations mentioned in the research paper.
Dr. Mujahed Zayed stressed the importance of participating in the conference in view of the real results reached by the researchers through the analysis of realistic linguistic situations of an important phenomenon in linguistics. Moreover, Dr. Mujahed Zayed stated that such participation places the name of the Arab American University in international events and conferences with highly credible scientific outputs, and thus enhances the University’s remarkable presence among the best Universities that participate in research activities at the local, regional and international levels.
