Discourses of the Arab Revolutions in Media and Politics

Stefanie Ullmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000398984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Drawing on approaches from critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and cognitive linguistics, this book critically examines metaphorical language used in global media coverage and political statements on the events of the Arab Spring.

The volume begins by summarising key events of the Arab Spring, tracing the development of protests from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya and Syria as well as the wider impact on the region. Ullmann builds on this foundation to lay out the theoretical frameworks to be applied to an extensive corpus of natural language and actual discourse highlighting Western, Middle Eastern, and North African perspectives which integrate theoretical work on metaphor, blending theory, and semantic prosodies. Methodological considerations on corpus selection and different conceptualisations of politics and mass media, generally and across countries, are discussed, with the final chapters outlining the overarching themes across metaphors in the corpus and how these metaphors were ultimately framed in the mass media and political landscape.

This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in critical discourse analysis, language and politics, and corpus linguistics.

1 Introduction

A Watershed Moment

As I am writing these lines, we are, yet again, confronted daily with scenes of protests and revolts, this time reaching us from the United States of America. The images seem like a chilling reminder of what happened over a decade ago in the Arab world. Following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, we have seen streets literally on fire, teargas thrown at peaceful protesters and civilians and journalists objected to unjustified police brutality supported by the country’s president. Citizens worldwide have joined protests against systemic racism and police violence. How could the world’s greatest democracy come this close to descending into such mayhem, more usually associated with dictatorships and totalitarian regimes? It appears that the world has spent the past ten years in constant upheaval. The year 2010 was defined by Amnesty International as an important “watershed” moment in the sense that this particular period of time saw the beginning of a series of movements which no one had previously thought possible:

The year 2010 may well be remembered as a watershed year when activists and journalists used new technology to speak truth to power and, in so doing, pushed for greater respect for human rights. It is also the year when repressive governments faced the real possibility that their days were numbered.

(Amnesty International 2011, xi)

What began in North Africa in late 2010 and early 2011 as peaceful civil protests asking for the granting and improvement of basic human rights, freedoms and living standards has morphed into violent confrontations between government and opposition forces in many North African and Middle Eastern countries, with one of the most brutal and lethal wars still gripping Syria. On 17 December 2010, Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi, a young vegetable seller in the small Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire because he saw no prospects for himself to get a well-paid job in order to provide sufficiently for his family. He later died of his severe burns in a hospital on 4 January 2011. His tragic public suicide changed the Arab world and has ever since been treated and defined as the key catalyst that triggered the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, which eventually brought uprisings and civil unrest to large parts of the Middle East and North Africa. From Egypt’s first “Day of Revolt” on 25 January 2011 to initial protests in Libya on 15 February 2011 and the beginning of a series of protests and revolts in Syria on 18 March 2011 as well as notable acts of civil unrest in Yemen, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Algeria; all of a sudden it appeared as if the entire Arab world were in upheaval or, as Al Jazeera described it on 27 January 2011, “the Arab world is on fire” (Cassel 2011). In a number of countries, such as Tunisia and Egypt, the protests resulted in the ousting of totalitarian leaders as well as first approaches to public elections. In others, like Libya and Syria, the events caused civil wars of unprecedented violence and brutality. As these lines are being written, people are still dying in Syria, with the official death toll having been estimated to have exceeded 560,000 (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights 2018) and large parts of the country lie in ruins. At the same time, as more than 5 million people have been displaced (UNHCR 2019), neighbouring countries as well as large parts of Europe have been faced with one of the biggest and most severe refugee crises since the end of the Second World War.

It is debatable whether or not the Arab Spring has, in fact, brought positive change and democracy to the Middle East and North Africa. But no matter what the answer to this question may be, “the Arab Spring has inspired people around the globe to take matters into their own hands” (Al-Amin 2013, 327). In October 2011, the United States of America bore witness to the birth of a civil movement, the ‘Occupy’ movement, that would soon cross borders and eventually reach countries all over the globe. Similarly, what followed from 2011 onwards were large-scale protests against austerity measures in Greece, student protests in Great Britain, civil protests in Moscow, demonstrations by frustrated youth facing unemployment in Spain, protests in Brazil and Venezuela, the Ukrainian revolution, the Ferguson unrest following the shooting of Michael Brown as well as the so-called ‘umbrella movement’ in Hong Kong. Most recently, the protests in Hong Kong have reached a new climax and global demonstrations to raise awareness about climate change are unprecedented. Last but not least, the current events all over the United States surrounding the murder of George Floyd are a gruesome reminder of what is at stake when democracy breaks down and people’s freedom and rights are threatened. To quote Mason (2013), “[w]e’re in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical innovation, a surge in desire for individual freedom and a change in human consciousness about what freedom means” (p. 3). Still, no revolution or rebellion in recent years has been as uprooting and momentous as the events of the Arab Spring. Even today, more than ten years after the beginning of the Arab revolutions, the great significance and urgency of these events remain clear.

Equally memorable as the events as such has been the coverage the protests in the Arab world have received by both the media and politics, which strikingly teems with metaphors. Even the renowned linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky seemingly cannot avoid resorting to the use of metaphor, when describing and explaining what occurred in Tunisia and Egypt:

The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a Western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.

(Chomsky 2012, 253)

Chomsky speaks of shock waves, driving out dictators and reverberations. Likewise, the short news excerpt below, taken from the British newspaper The Guardian, is full of metaphorical expressions: Syria being in flames, Egypt deadlocked, Libya enfeebled, the gloom and growing shadow of the events, and even the idea of a welcomed revolution.

With Syria in flames, Egypt deadlocked, and Libya enfeebled, a Tunisian failure would complete the gloom casting a growing shadow over a revolution once so widely welcomed in the region and outside.

(Guardian, 26 July 2013)

Without going further into detail at this point, it is striking to note the sheer amount of metaphors in this short extract, of only sixty-three words. One can easily identify at least nine instances of metaphorisation (ranging from simple personification to driving vehicles and disastrous natural forces), already adverting to the large amount of metaphors that can be found in various types of discourse regarding the Arab Spring. And we must also bear in mind that all of these metaphors carry evaluative notions relevant for the question of how we perceive the events.

1.1 Why Metaphor?

According to Geary (2011), “research [into metaphor] has shown that people not only remember metaphors better than the actual wording of texts but they also continue to use those metaphors when thinking further about the same topic” (p. 124). It follows that metaphors in discourse are powerful rhetorical tools. In politics and media, in particular, metaphors represent an accessible linguistic device that decreases complexity and eases comprehension. Moreover, metaphors invoke more than just semantic meanings, but possess pragmatic functions often specifically deployed in public discourse to influence and sway people’s opinions. In doing so, however, their influential and manipulative nature often remains hidden and affects us on a subconscious level. Metaphors not only carry weight on the linguistic level, but also resonate strongly on a conceptual basis (Barcelona and Valenzuela 2011, 27). Deployed accordingly, they can become lastingly entrenched in long-term memory and eventually turn into a new construal of reality. Moreover, metaphors encode important political positions and, by analogical reference to basic and relatable human experiences, they can have strong emotional resonance. The recognition of the relevance of the present study rests on the knowledge and awareness that metaphors may have crucial effects on the way we perceive and think about different topics and events. They denote important aspects of world knowledge and the way events and states of affairs are processed. Eventually, metaphors may even change peoples’ perceptions of events as much as representations of socio-political structure. After all, language is never arbitrary and wording is assumed to be ideological (see, e.g., Stubbs 1996, 107). Thus, a critical discourse analysis of metaphors – and their evaluative prosodies – used to describe and conceptualise the Arab revolutions can enrich and further our understanding of these major political events (see also van Dijk 1997, 38). On a socio-political basis, it follows that a critical investigation of discourse shall raise awareness and call into question the language that has been used to depict these notable events.

1.2 The Language of the Arab Spring as a Research Area

But why study the language of the Arab revolutions in the first place? Much has been written and published about the Arab Spring, beginning at the very start of the revolts and uprisings in late 2010 and early 2011. Especially during the years 2012 to 2014 we saw a large number of new publications enter the market and academic world. Most of these publications, however, deal with socio-political, geopolitical, historical, cultural, legal or religious issues connected with the events. Scholars in the field have been trying to understand and explain why these revolutions happened when and the way they did (see, for instance, Rand 2013; Dabashi 2012). They have, furthermore, intensively studied (local and global) geo-political and economic factors that have played a role in the uprisings as well as the transitional, democratic changes most of the Arab Spring countries either have expe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction: A Watershed Moment
• Chapter 2: Unhinging the Old Order: The ‘Arab Spring’ Protests and Revolutions
• Chapter 3: Performing Critical Metaphor Analysis in a Conceptual Integration Framework
• Chapter 4: Corpus Approaches to Critical Cognitive Metaphor Analysis
• Chapter 5: The ‘Arab Spring’ Corpus: Set-up and Design
• Chapter 6: Using Contextual Information in a Large-Scale Study of Metaphor
• Chapter 7: The Metaphors of the Arab Revolutions
• Chapter 8: Of Journeys and Natural Forces: The Arab Revolutions in Media Discourse
• Chapter 9: Of Journeys and Diseases: The Arab Revolutions in Political Discourse
• Chapter 10: Conclusion
• References
• Index