Going Global: Arabic Language Study Changing across Cultures and History

The themed issue of Quaderni di Studi Arabi aims to reflect on how Arabic as a Foreign or Second Language has developed both in learning and teaching practices. This will be described while following the evolution of Arabic over time at a diachronic level, and also across cultures. Language being considered the way to access and improve knowledge, the different educational environments have focused on different content and learning objectives in different times and across different societies: from sacred scriptures to everyday life communication, passing through specific focuses on politics, economics, etc. In addition to the focus on different content, general linguistics theories, pedagogical developments, as well as applied field research have had an impact on teaching methodologies and practices in the classrooms. Arabic has moved from being studied through the Fergusonian lens of diglossia to being considered either as a set of code-switching and code-mixing phenomena, or as “one language” model.