Sociolinguistic anatomy of mobility: Evidence from Qatar

•Contribution to theorization of mobility in sociolinguistics.•Mobility as interaction of sociolinguistic scaling and functionalization.•Sociolinguistic scale analysis of narratives from native Qataris and expats.•Stance taking analysis of mobility pattern construction.•Enhanced ethnography on under-researched State of Qatar.

This is a sociocultural linguistic study on the ways whereby mobility is reflected upon in life narratives. An ethnographically informed sociolinguistic scale analysis shows that when residents narrate their life experience before and after they come to work in Qatar, they construct their sense of mobility as a system with two axes on which people locate themselves: one horizontal, with a spatiotemporal focus, and one vertical with a social stratification focus. The spatiotemporal dimension is constructed through stancetaking, while the social stratification dimension through upper- and lower-level scales. Epistemologically speaking, this study contributes towards the modeling of mobility as a constructed experience in an under researched absolute monarchy-led, financially booming, rapidly expanding and globalized context, such as Qatar.