Language and Politics in the Middle East

This book continues the seminal work of Yasir Suleiman, who is currently the incumbent of the Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa'id Chair of Modern Arabic Studies at Cambridge University, on the sociolinguistics of Arabic, on which he has edited three valuable collections (1994, 1996, 1999). The current volume forms part of a trilogy, which started with The Arabic Language and National Identity (2003) and is set to culminate in (the provisionally entitled) Translation and the Nation: The Politics of Intercultural Relation in the Middle East. In more ways than one the present work complements the former as both deal with the relationships between language and identity, with the present work doing so through the spectrum of conflict. As the author deftly points out, A War of Words looks at language 'as a form of cultural practice and as an inevitable site of ideological contestation involving asymmetrical power relations between groups and individuals' (p. 7).

The book consists of six parts. The introduction sets the tone by providing some perceptive examples of language as a weapon in conflict through satire, with examples from Libya and Palestine. This is followed by a brief overview of the subsequent chapters. All the chapters are set out in a highly structured and reader-friendly way, with a succinct preamble setting the scene, which is subsequently further expanded, with the main points distilled into a short conclusion.

In the second chapter 'Language, power and conflict in the Middle East' (pp. 7–57), Suleiman discusses the use of language in power relations, particularly as a means of subversion. Here, as in other places in the book, the author often has recourse to personal experiences as a Palestinian to underscore a point, and thus offers invaluable insights into the sociolinguistic mechanics underpinning and/or concomitant to the various processes involved in the contexts of personal interaction. The chapter opens with a case study on the procrustean policies employed by the Ottoman administration to impose Turkish, and its effects on Arabic. This is followed by an account of foreign influences on Arabic (specifically in shop signs) and code switching, which is also one of the rare instances in the book where the author devotes attention to North Africa and the French-Arabic bilingualism that is rife there. Of particular interest is the contradiction between perception and practice of code switching, with the majority of people both condemning it and practising it. The second case study of the chapter is on a recent – and much underexplored – phenomenon, i.e. Gulf Arabic pidgin, the link language used between Arabic speakers in the Gulf and the many guest workers from the Indian sub-Continent. The final section of the chapter examines the conflict between language modernisers and traditionalists (though one might argue that 'reactionaries' might be more appropriate in this context), and the various calls for reform over the past two centuries.

In the third and fourth chapters, entitled, respectively, 'When language and dialects collide: Standard Arabic and its 'opponents" (pp. 58–95) and 'When dialects collide: language and conflict in Jordan' (pp. 96–136), Suleiman looks at Arabic from within. In the former chapter, he concentrates on the 'manichaeism' that has dogged the debate pitting Standard Arabic (fuṣḥā) against the use of the colloquial (^cāamiyya). A discussion of the evolution of this controversial issue takes the reader through clashes with 'the external front', i.e. actions by 19th-century Orientalists such as Francis Newman and William Wilcocks, and those involving 'the internal front', i.e. Arab scholars. The author provides a wonderfully eloquent analysis of the interests of the various protagonists, teasing out the strands – many of them contradictory – of the conflicts (including the issue of the so-called 'linguistic shu^cūbiyya'). Suleiman ably views the entire issue through the prism of 'the use of language as a proxy to discuss issues of national and state identity construction.' (p. 86). The topic is further elucidated by a case study of the...