Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Language, power and conflict in the Middle East
- 3 When language and dialects collide: Standard Arabic and its ‘opponents’
- 4 When dialects collide: language and conflict in Jordan
- 5 When languages collide: language and conflict in Palestine and Israel
- 6 Language and conflict in the Middle East: a conclusion
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Middle East Studies 19
2 - Language, power and conflict in the Middle East
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Language, power and conflict in the Middle East
- 3 When language and dialects collide: Standard Arabic and its ‘opponents’
- 4 When dialects collide: language and conflict in Jordan
- 5 When languages collide: language and conflict in Palestine and Israel
- 6 Language and conflict in the Middle East: a conclusion
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Middle East Studies 19
Summary
Language and power
In this work, language is viewed first and foremost as a form of cultural practice and as an inevitable site of ideological contestation involving asymmetrical power relations between groups and individuals. This is one of the major premises upon which this study is based, wherein power signifies the capacity to act in a way that involves the consent, acquiescence or resistance of others (see Barnes 1988; Hindess 1996). I am therefore not interested here in language as a structural system. Structural information – phonological, grammatical or lexical – will be given when it is necessary to contextualize a point of linguistic structure, and only in so far as this relates to the issue of language and society, which is the main focus of this research.
From an instrumentalist point of view, language is a means of communication. In this role, language links the members of a speech community to each other in the present. But it also serves to link these speakers to their history, endowing them with a sense of identity whose roots are located in the past. And it is this past, mythical or real, that animates the cultural practices and ideological concerns that drive the members of the community towards an imagined future. Language always stands at the crossroads of (social) time, linking the past with the present, and linking these two with the future.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A War of WordsLanguage and Conflict in the Middle East, pp. 7 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004