The Arab Jews and the Arabic Language in Israel: An Ongoing Ambivalence between Positive Nostalgia and Negative Present1

This article, written by Maisalon Dallashi, relates to a rather tragic survey which demonstrated a significant decline in knowledge of Arabic among Arab Jews following their immigration to Israel. The survey results, presented here in English for the fi rst time, form the backdrop for an analysis of command of Arabic among three generations of Arab Jews in comparison with non-Arab Jews living in Israel. Dallashi’s nuanced analysis of the complex relationship between Arab Jews and Arabic demonstrates that language is harnessed to promote two different discourses in Israel: on the one hand, it is a means of connection, while, on the other hand, it is a tool of segregation. By focusing on the Arab-Jewish community in Israel, Dallashi sheds light on processes that have resulted in what she calls ‘the dialectical relations in which Arabic concomitantly represents various, contradicting and even dissonant values’.

Orchestrating Multimodal Protest and Subverting Banal Nationalism in the Linguistic Landscape of the Tunisian Revolution1

This article, written by Sonia Shiri, sheds light on a fascinating case study of linguistic landscape. The author uses a multimodal approach to examining the Tunisian demonstration of 14 January 2011. She explores the way in which protesters exploited a variety of peaceful multimodal strategies in order to subvert the linguistic landscape of the capital city and bring about political change. The study, based on an analysis of slogans and pictures, focuses on a specific and critical demonstration that led to the eventual flight of Tunisian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Shiri highlights that demonstrators’ usage of multimodal signs eventually helped them to prevail in the transient linguistic landscape.

Code Choice, Place and Identity in Egypt: Evidence from Two Novels

This article, written by Reem Bassiouney, examines the relationship between place, identity and language in two Egyptian novels: Qindīl Umm Hāshim (The Saint’s Lamp) by Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī (1944) and Awrāq al-narjis (Leaves of Narcissus) by Sumayyah Ramaḍān (2001). Both novels address questions of identity in Egypt, during and following the British occupation of the country. In the first novel, the protagonist studied in the UK and returned to Egypt during the British occupation, while in the second the protagonist studied in Ireland and returned to Egypt some fifty years after the period of British colonisation ended. Perceptively and convincingly, Bassiouney analyses the role of code choice – between Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic – in the two novels. Corresponding with Suleiman’s extensive work on code-switching in Middle Eastern communities, Bassiouney argues that the authors use code-switching in order to reflect the protagonists’ stance towards the self, towards others and towards place. She highlights that in matter of fact, code-switching in the two novels does not reflect real patterns of language use, rather redefines and reconstructs different stances held by the authors towards their protagonists.

Metaphorical Recurrence and Language Symbolism in Arabic Metalanguage Discourse

This article, written by Chaoqun Lian, begins by pointing out that in Arabic metalanguage discourse one often encounters metaphors associating the form and situation of Arabic to non-linguistic entities and activities. Many of these metaphors, according to Lian, belong to ‘organic metaphors’, as they depict Arabic and its varieties as living organisms. In his article, Lian investigates the recurrence of ‘organic metaphors’ in language policy discussions within the Arabic language academies in Damascus and Cairo. By carefully analysing selected cases of metaphor-making, Lian unearths the normally covert link between language perception and socio-political circumstances in the Arabic-speaking world. According to Lian, when these socio-political circumstances are taken into consideration, academic research will be able to produce a more nuanced, dialectic understanding of the ‘organic’ perception of languages.

Transcultural Content and Translingual Reflection: Rethinking the Arabic Language Learning Experience

This article, written by Karin C. Ryding, argues that while Arabic has garnered increased attention by the American education system over the past decade, the sociolinguistics of Arabic are being neglected in such educational endeavours. This is despite academic research on this topic, including, notably, Yasir Suleiman’s Arabic Sociolinguistics: Issues and Perspectives (1994). Ryding writes that the complexity of teaching and learning Arabic is related to the transcultural realities of living and working in the Arab world. As she demonstrates, Arabic is particularly challenging as the language must be modified to conform to different types of interaction. Ryding then analyses some of the shortfalls in the fi eld of Arabic language instruction, and argues that because Arabic teaching – due to its distinctive diglossic nature – lacks many traditional models to choose from, it must construct its own, which she refers to as ‘the repertoire model’. Ryding summarises by noting that sociolinguistic analyses, like those studied by Suleiman, must be taken into consideration and should force us to come to terms with the linguistic reality of multiple discourse levels and, accordingly, to develop new models for Arabic pedagogy.

Introduction: Words, Language, Message

The Introduction, co-written by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar, highlights that language – including ones’ verbal and written expression, selected or forgotten terminology, vowels pronounced or not pronounced, and locations written on road signs – provides researchers with a nuanced, honest and deep analysis of society, of what it tells us and of what it keeps away from us. The authors highlight that for Yasir Suleiman, to whom the book is dedicated, and as seen in his extensive academic research, language deeply and profoundly exposes social and political realities. The authors therefore refer to language in its larger context, including the words which form the building blocks of language, the context in which such words are written and the phraseology selected, and to the way that the study of language may emerge as the ‘Black Box’ of human social and political journeys.

‘Arabic is Under Threat’: Language Anxiety as a Discourse on Identity and Conflict

This article, jointly written by Ashraf Abdelhay and Sinfree Makoni, lays out a series of critical reflections on the discourses of language anxiety that characterise Arabic as a ‘threatened language’. Examining Arabic as a site of social contestation in the Sudan, Abdelhay and Makoni analyse three statements that express a specific set of ideas and social attitudes about language, identity and society. The first statement was made at a rally by President Bashir a few weeks before the southern referendum held in 2011. The second statement comes from an article written by the Sudanese journalist Hussein Khojali. Finally, the third statement is a metalinguistic commentary made by the late South Sudanese leader John Garang de Mabior. Despite the different contexts surrounding their statements and the differences between them, Abdelhay and Makoni demonstrate that all three statements are metalinguistic commentaries which bring language to the fore as a proxy for articulating wider social and political concerns. All statements are ideological; they all link language with the extra-linguistic world of identity politics and power. The authors thus conclude that in contexts of conflict, individuals display awareness of the indexical values of language, ‘and they exploit the symbolism of language to articulate social and political issues’.

The Hauntology of Language and Identity1

This article, written by John E. Joseph’s, begins with a reference to Yasir Suleiman by highlighting how language and identity – a connection featured in a considerable part of Suleiman’s academic work – are embedded in one another as they occupy what Joseph terms ‘the same memory’. Joseph then employs the term hauntology (Fr.: hantologie), coined by Derrida in his Specters of Marx, to explicate linguistic identity. Joseph’s argument is further developed in his reference to a paper by Wernberg-Møller (1999) which was published following series of conferences on language and society in the Middle East and North Africa organised by Suleiman at Edinburgh in the late 1990s. Through Wernberg-Møller’s paper in which a conversation by a Moroccan family that had been living in Edinburgh for around twenty years is analysed, Joseph demonstrates the value of the hauntological perspective in understanding text and in identifying its hidden meanings. Emphasising the strong emotive component of identity, Joseph urges us to challenge our ‘rational comfort zone’ through the lens of hauntology’s analytical strategies.

War Names in the Arab–Israeli Conflict: A Comparative Study

This article, written by Muhammad Amara, analyses the names given to the different wars – from 1948 hitherto – on both the Israeli and Arab sides. Amara surveys and analyses the names given to six wars (in the years 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006), two Palestinian intifāḍas (1987 and 2000), and three Israeli attacks on Gaza (2008, 2012 and 2014) in Hebrew and in Arabic. Referencing Suleiman’s argument that ‘code names offer us snapshots of symbolic meanings along a moving frame… However, by tracking the major breaks in this frame, we can identify the major sociopolitical ruptures in society,’ Amara highlights how language in the Israeli–Arab conflict not only reflects events in the political arena and on the battlefield, but also shapes the realities of both sides of the conflict.

Rakākah and the Petit Quarrel of 1871: Christian Authors and the Competition over Arabic

This article, written by Rana Issa, sheds light on a fascinating linguistic battle over the correct modes of Arabic expression between two Arab intellectuals – Ahmad Faris al-Shidyāq (1804–87) and Ibrahim al-Yāzijī (1847–1906) in 1871. At its core, the debate is over the ‘correct’ writing style, and whether Arab intellectuals suffered from a rakākah (solecism) in their use of language. Issa places this debate in the context of other linguistic debates prevailing in the nineteenth century – a period in which languages served as vehicles for constructing national identities. She examines the dynamics of Arabic linguistic ideology through the lenses of Arjun Appadurai’s technoscapes and Yasir Suleiman’s history of Arabic in his book The Arabic Language and National Identity. Following from an analysis of the battle over rakākah, Issa highlights that the two sides – al-Shidyāq and al-Yāzijī – represented two competing ideologies regarding Standard Arabic. Whereas for al-Shidyāq, a linguistic error was an aspect of the creative process, for al-Yāzijī, an error cheapened an author’s text and was nothing but a rakākah. Issa demonstrates that the obsession with rakākah reproduced itself in subsequent writings by nahḍa authors, and observes that the ‘protection of the language against rakākah’ was also a central part of the Arab language academies.