Argumentation and the Arab voice in Western bestsellers

2001

2020

Over the last ten years, a topic that had been previously skirted in the public sphere of Arab countries has been broached, namely, the expulsion and departure of the Jewish population from these countries.When writers had addressed this phenomenon in the past, they did so only in the context of the Palestinian/ Arab-Israeli conflict. The history of the Jews living in Arab countries (Arab Jews)2 has been dominated by an official nationalistic discourse that has rarely been questioned (Abdulhaq 2016, 7–48). This discourse consists of two parts, one Arab and the other Zionist. Both reject considering Jews as an organic component of the society in which they live. Arab discourse connects Jewish life to Israel and hence to the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli conflict. A new generation of authors and film makers is questioning this discourse, through novels mainly and, to a lesser degree, through non-fiction works, with consequences extending beyond the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli conflict. The ce...

Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 2011

The Camp David Accords were considered crucial political agreementsin the 1970s. They caused a huge political controversy among their supporters and opponents. This articleargues that the political discourse of Sadat, the Egyptian president at that time, played an important role in mobilizing Egyptians to support the Accords. To prove this argument it employs analytical tools from critical discourse analysis and pragma-dialectical theory. The aim of the article is to explain how Sadat's political discourse played a central role in persuading the average citizens to side with his approach. To tackle this question, the author analyzes the interdiscursivity between political and religious discourses in the major speech delivered by Sadat few days after signing the Accords. It also analyzes the strategic discursive maneuverings that were employed to demonize his opponents.In addition to drawing a connection between binaries such as peace/war and richness/poverty, Sadat employs religious discourse in order to de-legitimatize his opponents,depicting them as 'Imams of ignorance and idolatry' who are straying into darkness, while his supporters are depicted as enlightened, seeing believers. Thus, religious binaries have replaced political disagreement, whereas faith and disbelief have replaced support and opposition; and the Camp David Accords were represented not as a political agreement but as a semi-religiousstance.

Postcolonial Interventions, 2020

The article explores the representational dilemmas reflected in post- 9/11 Anglophone Arab fiction. The aim is to move beyond the Orientalist paradigm and provide fresh perspectives on the possible strategies employed to de-orientalize the Arab. Most Arab American writers address the problems associated with Orientalism. However, their approach to tackle such problems varies depending on their political and social make-up. Some subscribe to the Western discourse and rhetoric. Other writers advocate the Eastern culture, while some other writers remain in-between. This article examines Lailya Halaby’s Once in A Promised Land (2007), Rabih Alameddine’s The Hakawati (2008), and Alia Yunis’ The Night Counter (2009) which represent a range of the post-9/11 concerns in relation to this divide. These novelists reject the very idea of the Orientalist dichotomy. Instead, their novels offer multiple perspectives, interpretations, and reactions that all unequivocally stress the importance of intercultural understanding. Together, they call for the full recognition of Arab American identity, one set apart from Orientalist frameworks.

Moulding the Arab-Israeli conflict in a news report or commentary is a sensitive issue to many governments, organizations and individuals in this world. Many feel involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, for a variety of powerful reasons. These can be related to ideological, religious, or cultural affiliations. They can also be related to strategic, political or commercial interests in the Middle East.

Discourse and Palestine: Power, Text and Context, 1992

2014

For decades, the historical and political ramifications of the Palestinian / Israeli dispute not only created hostility between the Arabs and the Jews but also undermined the possibility of initiating a mutual dialogue between the two peoples. This paper aims to re-historicize the literary representation of the Jew in postmodern Arabic / Palestinian fiction dealing with the Palestinian question to illuminate controversial issues integral to both sides of the conflict. The paper argues that Palestinian authors particularly the great Palestinian writer, Ghassan Kanafani, provided counter-narratives deploying positive Jewish images in his literary works-in the post 1948 era-challenging orthodox and conservative Arabic discourse paving the way for a new era of sympathetic Jewish literary images in Arabic literature. In Returning to Haifa: Palestine's Children, the writer not only incorporates Palestinian suffering and displacement-as in traditional Arabic literature-but also engages...

International Journal of Linguistics

Language society and politics are terms, which are interchangeably important. Those three terms are linked in a way that is beyond separation or argument when it comes to analyzing discourse in general and political discourse in particular. Through language, society can deliver politics and impose beliefs and ideologies. The relationship between Arabs in general and politics has been a source of questions for decades due to many reasons. These reasons vary between social and historic reasons. This study aims to discuss and track how Arab writers and scholars looked at politics in their writings and how they perceived its importance and role starting with the early Islamic era and ending with our current days. It has been found that there is an apparent and close relationship between politics and religion. Further, it has been noticed that the political discourse delivered by Arab leaders has not received proper attention in terms of its effect on the different Arabic societies and t...

After the 9/11 attacks, the typography of the relationship between the cultural mentalities of the West and the Arab east seem to have dramatically shifted focus from comfortable vilification to reluctant realization of the need for a better understanding. Rather than simply reiterating the essentialist perspectives on both sides about the supposedly stable identities of these cultures, and the inevitability of otherness, this paper would like to suggest a redefinition of this cultural problematic. It will suggest that this is basically a crisis of communication, but one which is fundamentally unique in kind. A crisis, it is, but one that has no permanent "essences", "centers" or "wholes" upon which we can comfortably claim equally permanent solutions and / or answers. Rather, it is formed by temporary unfixable variables (language games) , defining temporary unfixable difference(s) , that are both historically conditioned (Western postmodernism and Arab para-modernism) and politically mediated. Language is, as is perhaps obvious, the most important of such variables, both as the main constructor of reality and as the only vehicle of referentaility for communicating such reality. This paper will, therefore, argue that what is, and has been, happening between these two cultures is a mere, but a very problematic, kind of misunderstanding made near perfect by the differences in these cultures' respective zeitgeists. Differences, that is, in the historical conditions (Western post-enlightenment discourse, and Arab post-ecclesiastical nostalgia) and the resultant methods of signification developed by these cultures' general mentalities respectively. Our main objective is, therefore, twofold. We shall deal with the problem of cultural referentiality, both aesthetically, with regards to the methodologies of meaning formation in both cultures, and culturally, with regards to the kind of social values such methodologies respectively seem to signify. Naturally, our examples are drawn from the most visible of media materials (popular films, TV soap operas, news programs, press reports, etc.) typifying the most general conceptions of these cultures' public identities. However, our analysis would obviously concentrate on the aesthetics of such discourse, rather than only on the linguistic side of its presentation.