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Papers by Chaoqun Lian

Peking University Middle Eastern Studies 2015 (1): 49-65

Arabi(ci)sation is a language planning and policy behaviour that aims at improving the social sta... more Arabi(ci)sation is a language planning and policy behaviour that aims at improving the social status of Arabic and modernising this language to curb the spread of powerful foreign languages in the Arabic-speaking world. On a deep level, Arabi(ci)sation reflects and responses to the “peripherality” of the Arabic-speaking world in the modern and contemporary world-system. This “peripherality” endures as a socio-political reality in different forms, which shapes the power relations among different languages in the Arabic-speaking world. Since fundamental changes of these relations are yet to occur, the implementation of Arabi(ci)sation policies has been largely ineffective. Nonetheless, discussions on Arabi(ci)sation continue vibrantly. Starting with this phenomenon, this paper describes and analyses the history of Arabi(ci)sation and two tendencies persisting in Arabic language academies’ discussions on Arabi(ci)sation. The paper concludes by suggesting that, on the subjective level, Arabi(ci)sation serves as a symbolic resistance to and a symbolic compensation for Arab(ic) “peripherality”.

China Book Review 2017 (4): 74-80.

This paper illustrates two different ways in which language and politics interact in the Middle E... more This paper illustrates two different ways in which language and politics interact in the Middle East by analysing and comparing the reflections of Egyptian and Algerian scholars on the relationship between language and politics in their countries. In Egypt, language is used as a cultural resource for political conflicts and national identity negotiation through indexical connections with politics. In Algeria, indexical connections as such are de-symbolised into language realities. Language thus becomes direct ‘proxy’ in power politics. In this context, language conflicts sometimes trigger wider social and political conflicts.

Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East, edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer Alnajjar, 49-68. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018

This chapter explains the recurrence of two sets of organic metaphors in the century-long meta-li... more This chapter explains the recurrence of two sets of organic metaphors in the century-long meta-linguistic discussions in the Arabic-speaking world on Arabic diglossia - the coexistence of Standard and Colloquial Arabic with claimed linguistic and functional disparities between each other. Depicting the two Arabic varieties as living organisms in harmony or conflict, one set of the metaphors conveys the idea of inalienability between the two varieties while the other highlights antagonism. Understanding metaphor as a tool and medium of ‘language symbolism’ that endows linguistic issues with socio-political significance, I carefully analyse each metaphorical recurrence in my data (debates and discussions within the Arabic language academies in Cairo and Damascus) in line with the most salient socio-political context of the time. While contexts of each recurrence varied, they shared some longue durée characteristics: (1) persisting rapture between state and society or the elites and the commoners as a result of the unfinished cause of state-social integration in individual Arab states, (2) duality of pan-Arab and territorial-state national identities as a result of increasing political fragmentation in the Arabic-speaking world, and (3) enduring sense of coloniality and external threats in Arab society as a result of long-term subjection of the region to the hierarchical power relations in the modern, capitalist world-system. It was these longue durée contexts that continuously ideologised Arabic diglossia in meta-language discourse, causing the recurring organic metaphors in question.

Books by Chaoqun Lian

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020

This monograph offers a critical interpretation of how the meta-linguistic LPLP discourse of majo... more This monograph offers a critical interpretation of how the meta-linguistic LPLP discourse of major Arabic language academies from the turn of the twentieth century until the present day continuously ideologises language with extra-linguistic, sociopolitical meanings, making it a proxy for the protracted courses of national identity negotiation, counter-peripheralisation in the modern world-system and modernisation. Integrating theories of language symbolism, language indexicality, LPLP, habitus, banal nationalism, world-system and perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis, the book develops our understanding of the phenomenon and mechanism of the entanglement between language, ideology and sociopolitical change in the Arabic-speaking world and beyond. The book also reveals and explains three effects of the ideologisation of language via language symbolism, namely symbolic compliance, resistance and compensation, as well as the consequences of the ‘de-symbolisation of language symbolism’. It also presents a comparative study of language reform discourses in China and the Arabic-speaking world to dialogue with the ‘Orientalism of the Orientals’ and to situate the ideologisation of Arabic in the global context. The book is the first systematic survey in English of the LPLP discourse of major Arabic language academies and one of the newest contributions to the study of the language-ideology interface.

Book Reviews by Chaoqun Lian

China International Strategy Review 1, no. 2 (2019): 354-7