About

Khaled Al Masaeed is an associate professor of applied linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University, working within the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics. His research is situated primarily within the interdisciplinary field of second language acquisition, with a focus on the tension between language ideologies and the realities of everyday sociolinguistic practices. Dr. Al Masaeed's work explores how individuals and societies navigate multilingual and multidialectal contexts, with particular attention to second language pragmatics. He works with both graduate and undergraduate students and has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Applied Linguistics, The Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, System, and Frontiers. In addition to publishing, he shares his scholarship through lectures, research presentations, and service on Ph.D. dissertation committees in various international contexts, including Australia, Canada, France, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Malta, Morocco, Qatar, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Prior to his current position, Dr. Al Masaeed taught at the University of Arizona and directed and coordinated study abroad programs across the Arab region, including in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Social psychology
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Pedagogy
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• Style shifts into an informal speech style in L1-L2 Korean interactions

  Journal of Pragmatics · 2026-01-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study investigates how speech styles in Korean are negotiated in real time in interactions between first (L1) and second language (L2) speakers. Responding to calls for work in L2 pragmatics to go beyond the use of DCTs and role plays, we report on data taken from elicited conversations in Korean and metapragmatic interviews with two L2 Korean speakers and three L1 Korean speakers. Drawing on interactional sociolinguistics (IS) (Gumperz, 1982), quantitative analysis of speech style distribution as well as line-by-line analysis of speech style shifts were utilized to examine how speakers orient to this potential conversational ‘trouble.’ Quantitative analysis of the interactions revealed marked quantitative differences between each pair and, particularly, each speaker's orientation to the interaction as either conversational facilitator or passive interactional participant. Line-by-line analysis of moments in which the L2 speakers shift into an informal speech style were analyzed and revealed three strategies employed by both L1 and L2 speakers: (1) self-initiated self-repair, (2) metapragmatic commentary, and (3) style mirroring. As the number of Korean language learners continues to increase (Lusin et al., 2023), this study provides a timely perspective on not only what L2 Korean speakers know about Korean speech styles, but what actually happens in L1-L2 interactions. • Elicited conversations are useful for studying L1-L2 pragmatic interaction. • Speech style distribution in L1-L2 interactions is largely L1-like. • L2 speakers, at times, style shift into informal speech styles that are non-L1 like. • Speakers have various interactional strategies for dealing with speech style shift.

  PublisherDOI

• Multidialectal Practices in L2 Arabic Pragmatics Research: Methodological Implications

  L2 Journal · 2026-05-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Research on learning second language (L2) pragmatics has undergone substantial methodological development in recent years (Taguchi & Roever, 2017; Taguchi, 2019), but it remains limited by a lack of attention to a key feature of pragmatic competence: multilingual and multidialectal practices. In a field dedicated to helping L2 students learn “how-to-say-what-to-whom-when” (Bardovi-Harlig, 2013, p. 68), methodological approaches that do not account for multidialectal practices miss key aspects of pragmatic development that are directly related to learners’ agency and identity. Current research methodologies are still highly influenced by monolingual ideologies often missing crucial layers of the learning process and environment, resulting in an incomplete view of pragmatic development. This article synthesizes existing methods and proposes ways to address these limitations by adopting a multidialectal perspective. Taking research on L2 Arabic pragmatics learning as a case study, a systematic review of the data analytic methods and findings from the past two and a half decades (e.g., Al-Gahtani, 2022; Al‐Gahtani & Roever, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Al Masaeed, 2017; Al Masaeed, Waugh, & Burns, 2018; Al-Rawafi, Sudana, Lukmana, & Syihabuddin, 2021; Roever & Al-Gahtani, 2015) reveals how multidialectal practices have been often overlooked in study methodologies, including data collection and analysis. Based on this synthesis, the article attempts to underscore the crucial role that multidialectal practices play in pragmatic development and the need for adopting a multidialectal perspective to challenge the influence of monolingual ideologies on L2 Arabic pragmatics research.

  PublisherDOI

• Challenging Misconceptions About Studying Moroccan Arabic: Beliefs of L2 Multidialectal Learners Beginning a Year-Long Study Abroad in Morocco

  Languages · 2025-12-26

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Morocco has recently been cited by the Institute of International Education as a leading destination for Arabic study abroad. However, research has shown that ideologies of language purism and unintelligibility position Eastern varieties of Arabic as more prestigious than Western. Yet, how these beliefs affect learners studying abroad remains an understudied topic, with few studies specifically investigating learners going to Morocco. This study utilizes language learning questionnaires and one-on-one interviews to explore learner beliefs about varieties of Arabic, with particular focus on Moroccan Arabic. Specifically, it looks at four advanced L2 Arabic learners who just started their one-year-long study abroad sojourn in Morocco. Findings show that due to negative stereotypes and misconceptions from native speakers, instructors, and colleagues, learners reported not wanting to learn Darija, the Moroccan variety of Arabic, before studying abroad. However, due to the immediate need of studying and living in Morocco, participants gained interest in Darija and started challenging stereotypes and misconceptions related to this variety of Arabic. These findings highlight the impact of standard language ideology and prestige on learners’ beliefs about what language varieties to study, and how these beliefs may change once learners prepare to and go abroad. Findings from this study support pedagogical and research suggestions to prepare learners for the sociolinguistic realities of the Arabic-speaking world, including critical awareness of ideologies and developing agency in dialect choice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• L2 Arabic pragmatics in the classroom: Insights from language instructors’ beliefs and practices

  System · 2024-11-18 · 5 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Tracking learnables and teachables in L2 Arabic dyadic conversations‐for‐learning

  Modern Language Journal · 2023-08-18 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article adopts learning‐behavior tracking as a research methodology within conversation analysis for second language acquisition to investigate its applicability to track and document how learning opportunities through collaborative repair work are brought about and whether they lead to second language (L2) word learning. To this end, the study examines longitudinal video‐recorded data from L2 Arabic dyadic conversations‐for‐learning beyond the classroom over 3 months. Findings highlight empirical and methodological contributions. First, the detailed analyses show that other‐initiated repair of a vocabulary item by the first language (L1) conversation partner is found to create opportunities for learning and lead to learning when it is oriented to as worthy of teaching by the L1 speaker and as a learnable by the L2 learner. Second, the study demonstrates the applicability of the learning‐behavior tracking model in illuminating learnables and teachables and providing evidence for whether learning has occurred as a result of being oriented to as such by both participants in real‐time interaction.

  PublisherDOI

• Translanguaging in Pragmatics

  The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics · 2023-06-27 · 3 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Pragmatics is concerned with situated language behavior and how meaning is communicated and interpreted in social interaction. Translanguaging takes into consideration the speaker, the context, and the whole linguistic repertoire. It focuses on how multidialectal and ‐lingual practices reflect the speaker's agency to purposefully deploy all of her/his linguistic repertories to construct knowledge, communicate ideas, and project identities in social interaction. In doing so, it acknowledges the internal perspective of the speakers and underscores their agency to draw on their whole language repertoire to make meaning and express their identities. Consequently, adopting a translanguaging perspective in pragmatics is indispensable as it (a) rejects monolingual ideologies that see language hierarchies as the norm and (b) empowers pragmatics research methods to measure pragmatic development. This entry is meant to discuss the relationship between translanguaging and pragmatics through providing an overview of translanguaging and underscoring the need for adopting a translanguaging perspective in pragmatic research and assessment.

  PublisherDOI

• Multidialectal and multilingual translanguaging in L2 Arabic classrooms: teachers’ beliefs vs. actual practices

  Frontiers in Education · 2023-05-03 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This study adopts a multidialectal and multilingual translanguaging perspective to explore the relationship between beliefs and actual linguistic practices concerning multilingual and multidialectal practices among L2 Arabic teachers in Islamic independent schools in Sydney, NSW, Australia. To this end, the study draws on class observations and individual interviews. The findings show a clear mismatch between teachers’ beliefs about the use of English and their actual employment of it in the classroom. The majority of the teachers indicated that English should be either limited or totally avoided in the L2 Arabic classroom, but class observations showed that (a) English was utilized in all 11 classes, and (b) it was used significantly more than Arabic in nine of these classes. As for multidialectal practices, although most of the teachers believed that the use of non-standard varieties along with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) should be limited, findings were inconclusive due to the fact that English was found to be the main medium of communication in the majority of the observed classes. Therefore, the study underscores the need for providing teacher training that demonstrates how to purposefully deploy multilingual and multidialectal translanguaging to help learners enrich their linguistic repertoire in their desired L2.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Researching and Measuring Second Language Pragmatic Development in Study Abroad: Insight from Arabic

  2022-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sociolinguistic Research vs. Language Ideology in L2 Arabic

  2022-01-28 · 6 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter draws on insights from the intersection between sociolinguistics and second language acquisition to review and discuss the diglossic nature of Arabic and its impact on the field of Arabic as a second language. After highlighting key concepts related to the focus of the chapter such as communicative competence, sociolinguistic competence, pragmatic competence, and standard language ideologies, the chapter discusses historical research and perspectives regarding diglossia as a major topic in Arabic sociolinguistics and underscores its impact on the field. Finally, the chapter concludes with recommendations for future directions in research and practices related to Arabic as second language.

  PublisherDOI

• The influence of socio-economic status, age, gender, and level of literacy on language attitudes

  Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages · 2021-12-31 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This study investigated the relationship between socio-economic status, age, gender, and literacy level and Haitian Gonâviens‘ attitudes towards Haitian Creole or Kreyòl and French. Most studies that investigated language attitudes of Creolophones have found that they have negative attitudes towards Kreyòl. Nevertheless, previous studies often included participants who are affiliated with education such as students, teachers, and language policy makers, or those from higher social classes. The current study, however, utilized a language attitudes questionnaire to collect data from 78 adult informants from diverse backgrounds. These participants included 21 highly literate, 51 partially literate and 6 illiterate Haitians. Findings revealed that participants of higher socio-economic status have more positive attitudes towards French than those from lower socio-economic status. Results also showed that there is a tendency for age, gender, and literacy level to affect language attitudes. For instance, positive attitudes towards Kreyòl were found to be more prevalent among older participants than younger respondents. Similarly, male participants had more negative attitudes towards French than female informants. Moreover, respondents of lower literacy levels had more negative attitudes towards French than those who were highly literate.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Linda R. Waugh

  2 shared

• Paul G. Renigar

  University of Arizona

  1 shared

• Lama Nassif

  Williams College

  1 shared

• Tom Hong

  1 shared

• Katharine E. Burns

  Carnegie Mellon University

  1 shared

• Theresa Catalano

  University of Nebraska–Lincoln

  1 shared

• Gerdine M. Ulysse

  University of Chicago

  1 shared

• Mohammed Tamimi

  Palestine Polytechnic University

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Second Language Acquisition and Teaching

  University of Arizona

• M.A., Second Language Acquisition and Teaching

  University of Arizona

• M.A., English Education

  University of North Carolina–Pembroke

• B.A., English Language and Literature

  Al al-Bayt University