Between instrumentality and symbolism: the politics of language in the Middle East

Language is an important resource in any society. It is the means by which the members of a group communicate with each other in conducting their daily lives. But it is also an instrument for shaping reality by influencing people's perceptions of that reality, and of what counts as reality. Words are not empty talk; they are a form of action. When used in situations of political conflict, language can emerge as a loaded weapon: it can motivate people to act in pursuit of particular goals to deadly effect, or it can dissuade them from doing so by appealing to their better natures, or by invoking the principle of enlightened self-interest that allows compromise and reconciliation to occur. Either way, language is ‘doing’. The Arabic grammatical maxim that speech is an act of the speaker (al-kalām min fiʿl al-mutakallim), enunciated by the famous linguist Ibn Jinni a millennium ago (see Suleiman 1999c), is one of the guiding principles of this study. It enables us to take the rhetorical use of language very seriously, rather than dismissing it as ‘hot air’. This is particularly pertinent when rhetoric is backed by material or physical force, or when the power between the contestants in a conflict is distributed asymmetrically. In such a relationship, the weaker party may in fact try to redress the balance of power in its favour by engaging in rhetorical acts on which it cannot deliver.