Against the background of a decade of economic liberalization and a nascent civil society, upwardly mobile young Syrians have increasingly turned to specific interactional styles and linguistic devices to distinguish themselves as members of a new elite. These young professionals have cultivated an interactional norm that requires inserting English lexical items and socially significant sentences into Arabic conversations. Such linguistic devices display their knowledge of Western popular culture, their commitment to developing a corporate business culture in Syria and their belief in the social power of volunteerism. In addition, the styles both index an orientation towards progressive, neoliberal social changes in Syria and erect boundaries that exclude those who cannot appropriately master and deploy English in interactional contexts. Based on 18 months of dissertation research in Damascus, Syria, this presentation will explore how linguistic practices that incorporate English words and phrases erect and enforce social boundaries among Damascus’ young adults. The interactional styles are most often on display at the entrepreneurial organizations and volunteer activities that have proliferated in Damascus in recent years. Drawing on extensive participant observation and interviews, this presentation will discuss this new Syrian paradox: that a social group whose primary identification is to eliminate nepotism, increase transparency and mobilize civil society simultaneously marks itself through exclusionary and often alienating interactional styles. It will further argue that the commitment to such interactional styles means that volunteer and civic activities actually serve to reify and make concrete socio-economic class divisions rather than minimize or eliminate them.