Politicizing identity: Code choice and stance-taking during the Egyptian revolution

Abstract

This study aims to offer a fresh look at the relationship between identity, stance-taking and code choice. The study provides three examples of different forms of Egyptian public discourse related directly to identity that took place during the 2011 revolution of Egypt, a time when state TV media stations cast doubt on the identity of the protestors by utilizing linguistic resources. This article argues that during the process of stance-taking speakers employ linguistic resources, discourse resources and structural resources. These linguistic resources include the associations and indexes of different languages and varieties, in this case Standard Arabic (SA), Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) and English. This stance-taking process depends on code-switching as a mechanism that lays claims to different indexes and thus appeals to different ideologies and different facets of identity. Second, this study also shows how speakers use public discourse in order to construe language as a classification category and an identity builder.

Indexing neoliberal ideology and political identities in a racially diverse business community

“…This analysis highlights tensions between critical discourse analysis (CDA) findings about the structural constraints of neoliberal ideology on everyday discourse and discourse analytic findings about the agency of participants to choose the ways they make political identity relevant in everyday life (Bassiouney, 2012; Bennett, 2013; Breeze, 2012; Chiapello and Fairclough, 2002; Gordon, 2004; Mulderrig, 2012; Ng, 2014). Participants’ interactions orient to and reproduce the hegemonic position of neoliberal ideology through complaining about policies that violate tenets of neoliberal ideology and through doing extra interactional work when they support policies that violate tenets of neoliberal ideology.…”

“…For example, other discourse analytic research highlights how participants construct locally recognizable political identities (e.g. US Democrat) that intersect with other interactionally and culturally relevant identities, such as national identity (Bassiouney, 2012) or family identity (Gordon, 2004).…”

The Arabic language and political ideology

“…This is where code choice or language evaluations can be used to convey an ideological, political stance. For example, Bassiouney (2012 demonstrates how language was used as a resource to reflect political stance during the 2011 Egyptian uprising. She analyses the case of a caller who phoned a state television channel and told the presenter that the protesters in Tahrir Square speak the English language very well.…”

Activism and radical politics in the digital age

“…Mouffe argues within the framework of radical democracy that understanding how these frontiers are developed is crucial for providing new impulses within a democracy. Studies that deal with the question of collective identity usually discuss the discursive construction of identity in protest and frames (Jansen, 2000;Bassiouney, 2012;Langman, 2013;Meraz and Papacharissi, 2013). More diverse mobilisations of social movements are discussed as the "personalisation of politics" based on the individual expression of personal action frames that coexist or have even replaced collective action frames (Bennett, 2013).…”