A retained Arabic accent simultaneously alienates and authorizes the native informer on Western media

Evidence

Whenever Fouad Ajami appears on American television to discuss “the mindset of these Arabs”, he never fails to include the phrase “we Americans”; but for the life of him he cannot quite get it through his head that the “A” in “Americans” is closer to a hamza than to an ‘ayn. The accent at once alienates, exoticizes, and authorizes him to opine about “these Arabs”. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 150

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the accent paradox central to The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s narrator, whose accent marks him as both authority and outsider.