Under now-besieged President Bashar al-Asad, Syria’s closed and isolated economy took a neoliberal turn, opening to global markets, permitting private investment and creating professional, managerial positions for ambitious young Syrians. At the same time, regime reduced subsidies and prices for basic commodities soared. The economic changes reverberated in Syrian society as well; well-positioned and well-educated urban Syrians earned larger salaries in new private sector positions while most other Syrians found life increasingly difficult and expensive. Privileged Syrians also joined newly permitted civic associations dedicated to volunteerism and entrepreneurship. In these new neoliberal positions of wealth and prestige, elite Syrians coalesced as a discrete social group and defined themselves against the majority of Syrian society. Elite Syrians increasingly relied on a serious of linguistic and discursive practices to erect social boundaries and provide moral justification for the exclusion of non-elite Syrians. In particular, elite Syrians used English terminology and phrases to indicate their elite status and their capacity for adapting to Syria’s new economic reality. This created new kinds of socio-economic class stratification as Syrians who could perform these linguistic practices moved into increasingly elite circles and Syrians who could not were considered morally deficient and unwilling to adapt to the new economy. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Damascus, Syria from 2007 until 2009, this presentation will explore the specific linguistic and discursive strategies used by elite Syrians to engender class stratification and to exacerbate class conflict. It will argue that economic and linguistic disadvantages work together to further alienate Syrians of different socio-economic statuses.