Mobility, Borrowing, and Identity: A Sociolinguistic Study of Gulf Arabic Influence on Jordanian Returnees’ Arabic

This study investigates how extended residence in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries reshapes the lexical repertoire of Jordanian Arabic speakers after returning to Jordan. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and a picture-naming task with 30 returnees, the research documents the extent, distribution, and social meanings of Gulf Arabic borrowings. Using a variationist framework informed by Labovian principles and contact-linguistic theory, the study demonstrates that borrowing is highly stratified by age, gender, education, and socioeconomic status, with younger and lower-SES speakers showing the highest incorporation of Gulf forms. Qualitative analyses reveal that borrowed lexemes function as indexical resources through which speakers perform prestige, nostalgia, transnational belonging, and sometimes linguistic resistance. The findings highlight that intra-Arabic borrowing is not a superficial transfer of vocabulary but a socially embedded process through which returnees negotiate identity, mobility histories, and shifting linguistic allegiances.