Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 1316
Part of Session 168: Sociolinguistics of revolution in world’s capital cities (Other abstracts in this session)
Verbalising Revolt, in Writing: from an online call to demonstrations to transient linguistic cityscape(s) of Cairo
Authors: Panovic, Ivan
Submitted by: Panovic, Ivan (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
To say that language has played, and continues to play, an important role in what is commonly referred to as the Egyptian Revolution, would be an understatement. In many ways, language has been constitutive of it. Ever since the initial uprising started throughout the country on January 25, 2011, with its focal point being Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, different ways in which language is put to work have been as important as bravery and persistence. In fact, it is exactly through verbal art and skilful manipulation of various linguistic resources that participants, both active and potential, are mobilised, informed, encouraged and motivated. While it is difficult, if at all possible, to postulate a direct, causal relationship between contemporary reconfiguration of the Egyptian sociolinguistic setting on the one hand, and on the other ongoing expressions of dissent and resistance among many Egyptians, there are reasons to argue that there is a correlation between the two phenomena.
Starting from an online call that was circulated on the Internet (primarily through Facebook) on the eve of the demonstrations scheduled for January 25, 2011, I examine linguistic features of a number of written revolution-related textual products, such as tweets, Wikipedia articles, post-January-25 books, posters, signs and banners displayed in Tahrir Square, as well as, mostly short lived, graffiti. I situate this analysis within my broader ethnographic findings on “a changing linguascape” in contemporary Egypt where Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) constitute the theoretical poles of what has traditionally been understood as “the diglossic continuum.” The Egyptian sociolinguistic setting, however, is here understood as being redefined and reconfigured by the increasing socio economic importance of yet another linguistic variety – English.
Relevant examples and linguistic details are discussed with reference to a broader socio-cultural context and local language ideologies surrounding the production and reception of a rapidly growing number of texts that employ a variety of features and draw on different linguistic resources, thus often defying, in the outcome, the hegemonic ideological projection that writing is the domain of MSA. The inventory of linguistic resources variously employed by various writers in various circumstances is identified to contain re-combinations across three linguistic varieties, MSA, ECA and English, and two scripts, Arabic and Latin. By and large, these re-combinations and language choices are shown to be strategic, locally meaningful, yet often indexical of global flows and aspiring cosmopolitanisms.
This ethnographically grounded account of a dynamic, changing and diversified character of revolution-related writing practices in present-day Egypt, exposes inadequacy of the concept of diglossia, of which the Arabic sociolinguistic setting is often cited as a textbook example, and calls for a more flexible framework that would account for the trans-/metro-lingual character of the local practice of revolt.