Linguistic Performance in Qatari Arabic Badawi, Bassiouney, Holes and Ibrahim have all contributed to the quest for strong sociolinguistic models of language variation. However, studies of the ways in which language is “designed” according to context and audience have focused largely on examples of Arabic derived from Egyptian and Levantine varieties. Little attention has been given to the Gulf dialects and their manifestations of variation. It is the objective of this paper to apply the theoretical lens of performance (Bauman) to the study of language performance in the production of Qatari speakers of Arabic. The methodology of the research rests on a linguistic analysis of language production of educated Qataris speaking in formal contexts. The socio-economic strata of Qatari speakers represented in the research range from average citizens to the Prime Minister. In 10 hours of speech extracted from TV and my own recordings, I isolate, identify and analyze the phonetic, lexical and grammatical manifestations of language which deviate from the non-performance register of Qatari Arabic as it is documented by Johnstone, Ingham and Holes. The findings of the paper indicate that while Qatari linguistic production in performance contexts shows little phonetic variation, it is rich in lexical and syntactic variation. Qataris tend to signal performance register with a preference given to substituting the Qatari variety for MSA or, in some cases, an Egyptian equivalent. The results demonstrate how Qataris shift their language patterns when speaking in formal contexts from their native dialect to a performance register. I propose that these shifts represent a performance variety of Qatari that is prestigious, erudite, sophisticated and appropriate for formal contexts. These findings suggest an effort on behalf of Qatari speakers to distance their speech from Bedouin features when speaking in performance contexts, and to associate Egyptian Arabic as well as MSA with academia and erudition. This unexpected result helps us understand the difference between the social and performance aspects of language performance.