The status profile of the individual bilinguals in the domain Language of KRG

Abstract EN

This research is entitled “The Status Profile of the Individual Bilinguals in the Domain Language of KRG’’ in which the term profile implies “a short description of someone’s life, character, work, etc.” and bilingual means “an individual’s ability to use two or more than one language successfully”.

And Domain Language refers to the Kurdish language which is the formal, regional, first language in the Kurdistan Region-Iraq.

The methodology of the current paper is the mixed (i.e., quantitative and qualitative).

The researchers surveyed 17 Arab-ethnic bilinguals living in the domain language in the hope of displaying some implicit factors of their language choice (Arabic and/ or Kurdish) in the Kurdistan Region-Iraq in 2018.The method or tool of investigating the current study case is a questionnaire with both 20 close- and open-ended items.

The objectives of this study are to uncover the situations or contexts where Arab-ethnic bilinguals switch one language to the other and to understand why they prefer or are constrained or forced to use one language rather than the other.

The problem of the paper draws its direction to that a number of Arab workers or people who are internally displaced persons (IDPs) migrated to Kurdistan Region-Iraq due to facing the ISIS attack or war, consequently settling (at least temporarily) in the region.

Thus, they are expected to face problems of expressing themselves through using Arabic and Kurdish languages if they are bilinguals as they cannot determine or resort to their either language usage easily, but based on some factors.

There are some questions posed to be responded about bilinguals’ attitudes in language choice in the community, the contexts in which they resort to using each language, and their reasons of shifting from language to language in their communication.

Among the study conclusions, social factors, political status and language prestige are most likely to be highlighted as the factors of language choice and change.