Do you speak Arabic? Managing axes of adequation and difference in pan-Arab talent programs

• Pan-Arab corporate media management of linguistic diversity in televised talent show competitions from 2003 to 2013.
• Tensions between entertainment programming discursive norms, state linguistic regimes, and product market expansion.
• The mediatization of non-prestige Arabics.

This article explores pan-Arab corporate media management of linguistic diversity in televised talent show competitions from 2003 to 2013. Pan-Arab television operates on an ideology and profit logic of transnational Arab ethnolinguistic unity. However, entertainment programming does not utilize Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the interactional norm, despite state linguistic regimes. Instead, entertainment media has discursively constructed Mashreqi (eastern) Arabic as unmarked media Arabic. I argue that changes in talent program participation tactics are widening corporate media inclusion and legibility of non-“core” Arabics (such as Tunisian, Fessi, Emirati, non-standard social registers) in recognition of changing market sensibilities.