ARTICULATIONS OF IDENTITY WITHIN KUWAITI HIGH SCHOOL CLIQUES

187 Pages·2010·1.46 MB·English

by  Dalal Almubayei

ARTICULATIONS OF IDENTITY WITHIN KUWAITI HIGH SCHOOL CLIQUES: LANGUAGE
CHOICES IN BOYATAND EMO FILIPINO YOUTH GROUPS

by

DALAL SALEH ALMUBAYEI

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON
May 2010
Copyright © by Dalal S. Almubayei 2010
All Rights Reserved
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I am thankful to God for granting me the opportunity to learn and grow
intellectually as well as personally through this journey of creating this dissertation starting
with brainstorming ideas, reviewing the literature, collecting the data, analysis, discussion,
writing, and rewriting. I dedicate this project to my family especially my mother Fatma
Alsabri and my father Saleh Almubayei as a token of appreciation for their unconditional
love, continuous support, and splendid confidence in my efforts.
I am also indebted to my friends Dalal Alwugayan, Nura AlAjmi, Batla AlAjmi,
Gadir Alshmali, Eman Hanafy, May Elkharsity, Mariam Elkharsity, Lisa Morris, and Shahad
Baqir for their motivation and emotional support. They have been there for me at all times
in this journey. And, I am very thankful to my friends and colleagues Fahad Ben Duhaish,
Fatma Haidari, and Lynnelle Rhinier for their love, care, and support during this journey. It
would have been harder without the encouragement of real friends. Then, of course, I will
not forget the assistance and feedback from my chair Dr. Laurel Smith Stvan and
committee members Dr. Jerold A. Edmondson and Dr. Jared Kenworthy. Special thanks go
to Dr. Nancy Rowe for her enormous help with the statistical analyses of the survey. Last but
not least, my wholehearted appreciation goes to the girls participating in this research.
Without them, this project would not have come to life. I am also thankful for the school’s
administration for allowing me to be part of their school community during my fieldwork.

April 14, 2010
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ABSTRACT

ARTICULATIONS OF IDENTITY WITHIN KUWAITI HIGH SCHOOL CLIQUES: LANGUAGE
CHOICES IN BOYAT AND EMO FILIPINO YOUTH GROUPS
Dalal S. Almubayei, PhD

The University of Texas at Arlington, 2010

Supervising Professor: Laurel Stvan
This dissertation adds to work exploring where language stands in the shaping of
adolescent speakers' social identities, since identities emerge through discursive and social
practices, and social selves are produced through interaction (Bucholtz 1999), but much of
the literature studying the role of language in defining the adolescent's identity is
insufficient (Fortman 2003). This study is based on data from five months of fieldwork in
2008-2009 with two distinct and stigmatized high school cliques in Kuwait. The first clique
is well known for its Arabish name boyat 'lesbian tomboys'. The second clique is a
combination of Emo subculture and Filipino ethnicity. The study adopts a "mixed methods
approach", which employed qualitative and quantitative measures. Qualitatively, the study
is situated within an ethnographic framework that used observation, interviews, and student
journal writing to emphasize the impact of language in shaping identity. Quantitatively, the
work included data collected from surveys of 672 high school students, Arabic newspaper
reports on the cliques, and a concordance analysis of the lexical items used by teens in
their blogs. Attitudes towards members of the boyat group reflected either disgust or
admiration. Attitudes expressed toward the Emo group stimulated only prejudice. The
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experience with ethnographic fieldwork suggested that in the lives of the student cliques,
the language behaviors of others (e.g., members from three social institutions: family,
friends, and school) can be more powerful than the behaviors of the young speakers
concerned. These behaviors are not merely signaling factors of youth group membership,
but leading factors towards social identity construction.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................................iii

ABSTRACT..........................................................................................................................iv

LIST OF TABLES.................................................................................................................ix

Chapter Page

1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………..………..…....................................1

1.1 Background: The Community .................................................................6

1.2 The Research Topic .............................................................................10

1.3 Research Questions...............................................................................14

2. LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................................17

2.1 Linguistic Choices.................................................................................17

2.2 Identity: Definition and Identification ...................................................25

2.3 Adolescents and Social Cliques............................................................29

3. METHODOLOGY...............................................................................................38

3.1 Media Opinions.....................................................................................39

3.2 Personal Websites/Blogs........................................................................40

3.3 Survey...................................................................................................41

3.4 Ethnography as a Research Design.......................................................43

3.5 Interviews..............................................................................................48

3.6 Written Data..........................................................................................50

3.7 Human Subjects and Institutional Review Board ..................................51

3.8 Concluding Remarks.............................................................................52

4. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE PRELIMINARY DATA...........................53

4.1 Media Opinions.....................................................................................54

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4.1.1 Boyat and Gays......................................................................55

4.1.2 Satanists and Emo.................................................................62

4.2 Personal Websites/Blogs........................................................................66

4.3 Survey...................................................................................................69

5. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA...................................84

5.1 Introducing the Ethnographic Fieldwork................................................86

5.2 The Boyat Clique..................................................................................87

5.2.1 The Boyat Clique in the Field................................................87

5.2.1.1 Self Descriptions.........................................................88

5.2.1.2 School Influences: Peers and Faculty.........................90

5.2.1.3 The Friends Circle:
Nicknames, Profanity, and Jargon...........................................97

5.2.1.4 Family Influences......................................................102

5.2.2 The Boyat Clique in Interviews.............................................103

5.3 The Emo Filipino Clique.....................................................................111

5.3.1 The Emo Filipino Clique in the Field...................................111

5.3.1.1 Self Descriptions.......................................................111

5.3.1.2 School Influences: Peers and Faculty.......................115

5.3.1.3 Family Influences......................................................117

5.3.1.4 The Friends Circle:
Code-Switching and Profanity...............................................118

5.3.2 The Emo Filipino Clique in Interviews.................................123

5.3.3 The Emo Filipino Clique in Writings....................................135

6. DISCUSSION AND REALIZATIONS..............................................................................139

6.1 Linguistic Realizations........................................................................139

6.2 Community Reflections.......................................................................148

6.3 Future Applications.............................................................................150

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APPENDIX

A. SURVEY QUESTIONS......................................................................................152

B. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS................................................................................158

C. SURVEY ASSENT INFO SHEET ......................................................................160

D. ETHNOGRAPHY ASSENT INFO SHEET..........................................................162

E. SURVEY CONSENT INFO SHEET....................................................................164

F. ETHNOGRAPHY CONSENT INFO SHEET........................................................166

G. WRITTEN SECRET LANGUAGES....................................................................168

REFERENCES...................................................................................................................171

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION.......................................................................................178

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LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

4.1 Word Frequencies of Online Corpus .............................................................................68
4.2 Cliques in Public vs. Private Schools............................................................................71
4.3 Boyat- Scale General....................................................................................................76

4.4 Boyat- Scale Personal..................................................................................................76

4.5 Boyat- Scale Contact....................................................................................................76

4.6 Emo-Goth-Punk- Scale General....................................................................................77

4.7 Filipino- Scale Contact.................................................................................................77

4.8 Kuwaiti Dialect Uses......................................................................................................79

4.9 Modern Standard Arabic Uses.......................................................................................79

4.10 Farsi Language Uses...................................................................................................80

4.11 English Language Uses...............................................................................................80

4.12 Reasons English Is Popular in Kuwait..........................................................................81

5.1 Boyat Interviews..........................................................................................................104

5.2 Emo Filipino Interviews...............................................................................................123

5.3 Emo Filipino English Interviews..................................................................................124
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
In the past twenty years, there has been an increasingly noticeable linguistic trend
in the discourse of Kuwaiti youth. The lure of the English language and culture has
become especially obvious and powerful in regard to the youth of the country,
encompassing more and more of the younger generation. The English language exercises
a powerful influence in the world because of its prominence as the language of business,
political discourse, broadcasting, popular media, publishing, and education. Nevertheless,
research is lacking when it comes to the role that English plays in that part of the globe
where rapid educational, political, and social transformations that have been taking place
from recent tumultuous geopolitical events. Kuwait has been going through many
transformations as a consequence of the 1990 Gulf War. These changes have spread to all
aspects of society including the political, economic, social, and educational. At the same
time these internal developments have increased in magnitude, Kuwait has been gaining
increasing recognition in the eyes of outsiders, due to the 1990 Iraqi invasion, which not
only transformed the nation and its relations with other countries, but also impacted the
attitudes and behaviors of Kuwait’s citizenry.
English has been gaining popularity in Kuwait, especially among youth, and it is
worth exploring whether this increasing popularity is correlated to the formation of these
speakers’ personal and social collective identities. The current study, therefore, suggests
that language shift from the native language Arabic to English is a language choice that
can be indicative of identity or an identification with the English speaking world. This
spread of English use in the country is the leading inspiration for the current work; at the
same time, the researcher came across language attitudes and behaviors in Arabic that are
equally vital in constructing both personal and group identity among Kuwaiti youth. It is
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