Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East; The Case for Lebanon (original) (raw)
Related papers
Lebanon and its Linguistic Wandering: on the road to Language De-essentialization
With the present paper I would like to explore the modalities through which contemporary Lebanon's linguistic variants are used, deliberately manipulated or unconsciously modified by their speakers, in a bid to express multifaceted cultural, political or merely individual egos. Lebanon is well known as a country of rich migration history: the major flows of migrants left for Australia, Canada, West Africa and Europe in the 19 th and 20 th century, where they mostly followed the settlement and housing patterns of their community members. On the other side, migration flows also occurred within the country, predominantly from the South to Beirut's southern suburbs and its surrounding areas, since the Israeli Occupation (1978-2000) and the chronic state neglect since the years of the French Mandate (1920-1943) had caused further impoverishment. The migration towards other countries is named hijra, which means "migration" in Arabic, whereas it is called nuzuh in the case of migration within the same country. Lebanon has been mostly home to Iraqi, Sudanese and Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Palestinian Nakba onwards, despite its refusal to become signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention for Refugees, which classifies Lebanon just as a transit country for these forced migrants. Armenians and Kurds, wandering beings and victims of regional repression and violence par excellence, are also largely present in today's Lebanon. The historical legacies of Lebanese transnationality have been engendering throughout the years interesting linguistic phenomena that are worth being delved into. The linguistic superstructure characterizing Lebanon, as a result, turns out extremely layered, hybrid and articulated, insofar as it reflects the wandering dimensionality of Lebanese society. The methodology used to unravel the way local trilingualism plays out draws on ethnographic data that have been collected by the author throughout four stays in Lebanonperiodically from 2005 to 2012. While aiming at analyzing the role of the performative Lebanese speaker in communicative phenomena of code switching and code mixing, the present research sheds light on the wandering essence of language itself, as a mirror of its inhabitants' mobility. The ungraspable essence of migration gives birth to a highly complex formation of local languages and begs the question for still unexplored dynamics of linguistic affiliations to community, social class and ideological stance.
Lebanon, Identity, Dislocation, and Memory
The Levantine Review
Review of:Dalia Abdelhady, The Lebanese Diaspora; The Arab Immigrant Experience in Montreal, New York, and Paris (New York and London: New York University Press, 2011), pp. 198, paperback, ISBN 978-0-8147-0734-0 Craig Larkin, Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the past. (New York and London, Routledge: Taylor&Francis Group, 2012), pp. 226, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-415-58779-2
Lebanon's Struggle of Identities over a Century
Academia, 2022
Since its founding as an independent state in 1920, ‘Greater Lebanon’ is facing many internal crises over its identity: Arab identity or Lebanese one, combined with external interventions. This hindered the transformation of Lebanon into a ‘homeland’ with an integrating identity, which caused dangerous disputes even internal wars. Since the establishment of Hezbollāh a third identity influenced by Iranian culture emerged, so the Lebanese are divided today into two groups: Christians and many Muslims adhering to Lebanese identity and Hezbollāh with its environment see themselves as affiliated with Persian culture. The current political and identity crisis in Lebanon and the deterioration of the Lebanese economy and society are today accompanied by regional and international disputes that might lead to a conflict over Lebanon. Anyway, Lebanon will not be the same again: both federation or Hezbollāh's hegemony over the Lebanese state and society will be destructive.
Contested Lebanese Identity, 2012
Whenever one brings up the issue of Lebanon’s history, debate and disagreement lead the discussion, and no consensus is ever achieved. In her book, Lebanese Cinema Imagining The Civil War And Beyond, Khatib claims that “Lebanon is a contested concept. Historians do not seem to agree on what it means, and neither do its people” (Khatib, 2008: 3). She further states that there are those who claim that they are of Phoenician origins and others who discard such origins and support Lebanon’s Arabness (Khatib, 2008: 4). Franck Salemeh also argues about Lebanon’s contested origins by addressing the following questions: “Is Lebanon Arab? Is it not? Is it Muslim? Is it Christian? Is it Phoenician, Western, Eastern, Syrian? Is it simply “Lebanese” tout court, or is it all of the preceding together and none at all? (Salameh, 2010: 41).
History Textbooks and the Construction of National Identity in Lebanon
Although the topics of Lebanese historiography and national identity have received due attention in the academic realm (cf. Kamil Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, et al), few historians have attempted to reconstruct a history of national identity (or, an analysis of historical memory of national identity) as articulated through the Lebanese education systems. This project aims to fill that void by examining the role that history textbooks played in the construction of national identity in post-Mandate era Lebanon. The principal sources for this study include Lebanese history books used in primary and secondary school systems, national curricula (e.g., those published by the state) relating to the social project of creating a “history” through textbooks, and educational documents issued by the French Mandate and Lebanese governments. This project also seeks to engage with the historical theory developed by Maurice Halbwachs and David Lowenthal on issues of collective memory, the invention of tradition, etc.
Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews
Purpose: This article aims to analyze the retention of the Arabic language as a national identity by Lebanon nationalists who live as exiles outside European countries in two of her novels, Lailatul-Milyār and Sahrah Tanakkuriyyah Lil-Mautā. As a product of fiction from a colonized country, both stories represent postcolonial discourses, showing the effect of colonialism, while also voicing resistance to colonialism. Methodology: The research materials or material objects in this article are two of as-Sammān’s novels. Data sources were grouped in primary data, which is the two of Sammān’s novels, and secondary data, which is various references that support analysis, including books, journals, blogs, and other relevant sources in academic studies. Deconstruction is a textual strategy, which is utilized for analyzing the data in this study. No software tool is used. Main Findings: The Lebanese nationalists in Europe tried to maintain the use of the Arabic language as the first and for...
Linguistic policies and Language Issues in the Middle East
In Usuki A. & H. Kato eds. Islam in the Middle Eastern Studies: Muslims and Minorities, JCAS Symposium Series 7, Osaka, Japan, 149-174, 2003
In the last decades (i.e. since the 1950s and 1960s), many minorities in the Middle East have been advocating or fighting for their linguistic rights. On the other hand, the majority of Arab countries have tried to impose a quasi monolingual policy in favor of Arabic language. If the languages of the former colonial powers are still playing an important role, those of the non-Arab communities have always been marginalized on the basis of nationalistic and religious arguments. Focusing mainly on Egypt and Sudan, this paper attempts to identify the historical roots of the current linguistic policies and to assess their impact and implications for identity formation and national cohesion. The present monolithic linguistic policies are inherited mainly from a narrow conception of nationalism with Arabism being the dominant ideological model. Although it is not always easy to establish a clear distinction between Arabism and Islamism when dealing with the issue of Arab nationalism it appears that Islam, as a religion, did not play a decisive role in the linguistic choices of the modern Arab and Middle Eastern States. In many cases, the linguistic and cultural policies in favor of Arabization have been implemented by secular States (the Nasserist regime in Egypt, the Baathiste regime in Syria and Irak, the FLN in Algeria) but religious references were also explicitly made to acquire more legacy. It is therefore a combination of secular nationalism and modern political islamism that fed most official discourses supporting Arabization. The Arabization policies failed to ensure national consensus and national unity in a number of Arab countries with sizeable non-Arab minorities. This political failure have urge some governments (Morocco, Algeria, Sudan) to recently officially adopt a more tolerant attitude towards the non-Arab component of their society.
Language_Politics_and_Society_in_the_Middle_East_E..._----_(Intro).pdf
Published in honour of Professor Yasir Suleiman, this collection acknowledges his contribution to the field of language and society in general, and to that of language analysis of socio-political realities in the Middle East in particular. Presenting a range of case studies relating to the role of language in the Middle East, each shows that the study of language unearths deeper processes relating to political affiliations, social behaviour and transnational as well as religious and sectarian identities. It also explores questions related to the power of language as a socio-political instrument, and addresses current issues that facilitate an understanding of the evolving intersections in the areas of language and politics in the modern Middle East. This includes how language forms and is shaped by its social and political surroundings, the language manifestations of social, religious and political identifications, as well as groupings, divisions and polarisations in the encounter between language, conflict and politics in contemporary Middle Eastern communities. Looking at language as a proxy for social and political struggles, the volume gives prominence to the long-lasting legacy and great contribution of Professor Yasir Suleiman to the field.