A house divided: the persistent contradiction at the heart of Saudi language planning

This paper examines two recent decisions in Saudi language planning. The first is King Abdulaziz University's (KAU) decision to add the STEP English proficiency test as 10% of its weighted admission score, effective from the academic year 1448/1449. The second is the National Policy for the Arabic Language, approved by the Saudi Council of Ministers in February 2026, which mandates Arabic as the language of instruction at all educational stages. The two decisions emerged in the same policy season, but they pull in opposite directions. One highlights English as competitive capital for university entry. The other declares Arabic the sovereign language of education. Drawing on Tollefson's (2002) historical-structural and discourse-analytic approaches, on an adapted reading of Phillipson's (1992) linguistic imperialism, and on Bourdieu's (1991) account of linguistic capital, this paper argues that this is not a coordination failure but a structural contradiction in Saudi language policy. The contradiction is itself functional, simultaneously serving the state's neoliberal internationalisation agenda and its cultural nationalism agenda. The paper introduces two contributions to Critical Language Policy: self-directed linguistic imperialism and dual-track language policy. It concludes that STEP weighting is more likely to function as a mechanism of social reproduction: rewarding an unequally distributed resource without any equity safeguard. Thus, disadvantaged students are likely to bear the cost.