A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East.

Kaye, Alan S.

A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East. BY YASIR SULEIMAN. Cambridge Middle East Studies, Vol. 19. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. xiii + 270. $70.

The author, Professor of Arabic and Middle East Studies and Director of the Edinburgh Institute for the Advanced Study of the Arab World and Islam, introduces the topic of language and conflict in the Middle East by citing an Iraqi news broadcast from the first Gulf War. That broadcast referred to the American and British aircraft dropping bombs on Iraqi targets as ghirbanu shsharr 'ravens of evil'. He goes on to explain the implications of this term, viz., that ravens are despised creatures in Arab culture. Furthermore, learning that these planes took off from ard alkuwayt 'the land of Kuwait' rather than al-kuwayt 'Kuwait', the reader comes to understand that this Arabic wording served to delegitimize Kuwait as a separate, independent nation, implicitly intimating thereby that the Iraqi cause of annexation was a just one.

The penetrating study that ensues goes well beyond the writer's previous book, The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Georgetown Univ. Press, 2003). Indeed, the present tome is one in which Arabic words can be seen to have a life of their own--triggering emotional outbursts and packing a sentimental wallop that justifies the tome's title--A War of Words. The introductory description of the volume on the first page, also reproduced on the book's back cover, offers an excellent summary (part of which follows) that serves to whet the prospective reader's appetite:

 [the] book considers national identity in relation to language, the
 way in which language can be manipulated to signal political, cultural
 or even historical difference ... [it] offers ... poignant
 illustrations of antagonisms articulated through pun or double
 entendre. During the recent intifada, for example, Gazans would
 frequently respond 'bomba' ('Couldn't be better') to questions about
 their health. By making the phonetic connection between the Arabic
 'bomba' and the English word 'bomb', they declared their defiance,
 their optimism in the face of Israeli bombings.

Chapter one, "Introduction" (pp. 1-6), succeeds in explaining via several illustrations just how language, culture, and politics are interrelated via the Arabic language. For example, Suleiman astutely observes that the Libyan mass media are the "undisputed masters" of satire, citing the case of referring to the former Egyptian UN Secretary-General Butrus Butrus Ghali (his surname means "expensive" in Arabic) as Butrus Butrus al-Rakhis ("the cheap one"), or that during the Carter administration "Camp David" was called istabl (correct from istabl) dawud ("David's Stables"; however, note the Arabic singular), implying that Menachem Begin was riding his horse, Anwar Sadat (p. 2).

Chapter two, "Language, Power and Conflict in the Middle East" (pp. 7-57), effectively uses Suleiman's own experiences while traveling in his native Palestine--always using Arabic when communicating with his Palestinian kith and kin, but never using it when talking with Israeli Jewish or Druze soldiers. He purposely spoke English with them "unload[ing] linguistic firepower which, in comparison, is harmless yet very effective as an instrument of situation management" (p. 11). Moreover, it is important to stress that speaking Arabic was for the author a clear assertion of his identity as a Palestinian. The author does well to quote the doyen of American sociolinguists, Joshua A. Fishman, who so eloquently affirms: "[Language] is not merely a carrier of content, whether latent or manifest. Language itself is content ..." (p. 14). Moreover, Arabic is content much more than most, if not all, languages spoken today.

Quoting several Arab authors, Suleiman analyzes code-switching as "cultural colonialism" and "cultural subordination" (p. 33), while Pidgin Gulf Arabic is seen as the culprit in depriving many Gulf children of their heritage of speaking Arabic properly (p. 35). The influx of non-Arabic speakers into the Gulf countries has created Pidgin Arabic. It should be noted that this is not the first time Pidgin Arabic has flourished, as this occurred earlier with the Juba Arabic of the southern Sudan, now both a pidgin and a creole. It is no wonder, therefore, that a Society for the Protection of Arabic was founded in 1999 in Sharjah, although little information is given about its activities and support from citizens of the Gulf countries (p. 36).

Chapter three, "When Language and Dialects Collide: Standard Arabic and Its 'Opponents'" (pp. 58-95), comments on the nature of Arabic diglossia, much better understood as a linguistic continuum (see my "Formal vs. Informal in Arabic: Diglossia, Triglossia, Tetraglossia, etc., Polyglossia-Multiglossia Viewed as a Continuum," Zeitschrift fur arabische Linguistik 27: 47-66, incorrectly cited in the author's bibliography, p. 246). While most of this chapter deals with both Arab and non-Arab perspectives of this continuum, including Edward Said's Orientalism, Suleiman carefully considers the case of vernacular poetry in Saudi Arabia as espoused in Tawfiq Wahbas, al-shi'r al-sha'bi: shi'r am zajal? (Riyadh 1983) by looking into its condemnation in Marzuq Tinbak's al-Fusha wa-nazariyyat al-fikr al-'ammi (Riyadh, 1988) (pp. 82-87). One can see the reigning attitude of Middle Eastern officialdom, however, since the Gulf Cooperation Council Prize for the best book in Arabic studies was awarded to Tinbak's book in 1988. However, as Suleiman further points out, the plot thickened with the publication of a book in support of Saudi Arabian vernacular poetry by Sa'd al-Suwayyan in 2000 (al-shi'r al-nabati (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi). The debate concerning the legitimacy of writing in a colloquial dialect is likely to continue into the decades of the new millennium.

Let me now turn to the conservative views of the Egyptian intellectual Muhammad Muhammad Husayn (pp. 86-87, n. 27), who endeavored to discredit the building of a language laboratory to study modern Arabic dialects at the University of Riyadh in 1975 "by linking it to the external enemies of Islam and Standard Arabic ... Husayn believed that general linguistics and phonetics were developed in Europe to study the European languages" (p. 87). Husayn's statement is positively bizarre (and Suleiman's lack of commentary here is noteworthy): has Husayn no awareness whatsoever of the noted accomplishments of the medieval Arab grammarians, such as Sibawayhi, in general linguistics and phonetics using the spoken Arabic dialects of his day?

Chapter four, "When Dialects Collide: Language and Conflict in Jordan" (pp. 96-136), discusses, among other interesting topics, the pronunciation of the qaf in Jordan as a sociolinguistic marker. There are four different realizations: [q], [?], [g], and [k], and the uvular variant is reported to be associated with "the small communities of Druze and Syriacs [sic] in Jordan" (p. 98). The author offers insightful observations on the variable from his own experience while attending the University of Jordan thirty-five years ago. For example, he reports that his brother started to use [g] in public for his native glottal stop in 1970, which "is something he still does now after thirty years although [g] was never part of the family repertoire" (p. 115). Thus we may conclude that political considerations can be strong catalysts of linguistic change.

Chapter five, "When Languages Collide: Language and Conflict in Palestine and Israel" (pp. 137-217), sums up the linguistic situation between Arabic and Hebrew as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict by stating: "... both parties look at the language of the Other [sic] as the language of the 'enemy'" (p. 139). Much of the chapter is a critical review of Bernard Spolsky and Robert Cooper's The Languages of Jerusalem (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991) (pp. 167-71), and Suleiman builds a solid case that these authors make Arabic the minority language in the Old City of Jerusalem, whereas in fact it is the majority language (p. 171).

Chapter six, "Language and Conflict in the Middle East: A Conclusion" (pp. 218-30), offers the author's very Whorfian perspective, with which I am in firm agreement: "[Language] ... is also an instrument for shaping reality by influencing people's perceptions of their reality, and of what counts as reality" (p. 218). As illustrative, one may cite the emotionally charged, combative Palestinian spirit of resistance in the use of Arabic personal names, such as kifah 'struggle', tha'ir 'revolutionary', and intisar 'victory' (p. 219).

In conclusion, this is a comprehensive, thoroughly researched work utilizing five pages of Arabic bibliographical citations (pp. 234-39) and sixteen pages of references in other languages (pp. 239-54). Anyone wishing to do further research using Arabic sociolinguistics as a politically relevant discipline would do well to consider this book as a starting point.

ALAN S. KAYE

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON