Using Ideological Conflict to Create Carcinogen Risk in Arabic Scientific Discourse: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

Many Arabic scientific debates are devoted to disputes on cancer and its causes. Scientists tend to inform people about the danger of consuming and being exposed to carcinogens. The paper aims to explore the proximization strategy that Arab scientists rely on to construct carcinogen risk to promote people’s preventive actions against carcinogens. The paper intends to answer the main question: how does the Arabic scientific discourse employ ideological conflict to construct carcinogen risk? It is hoped that the paper can provide insights into the linguistic construction of concepts through the ideological conflict between two different poles in the Arabic scientific discourse. It provides insights for Arab scientists by promoting their awareness of the potential of Arabic for presenting a fully intellectual reflection of scientific knowledge. It focuses on the construction of carcinogen risk that generates tension between the values held by people and the opposing values ascribed to carcinogens. This aim is achieved by employing Cap’s (2013) cognitive pragmatic theory of proximization. The theory comprises three proximization strategies: spatial, temporal and axiological. The axiological proximization strategy is applied to a corpus of Arabic scientific discourse. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in the analysis to produce more objective results. Anthony’s AntConc (2019) corpus linguistics software is used for conducting mathematical calculations through corpus linguistics. The paper has arrived at some conclusions that show how axiological proximization is employed to construct carcinogen risk which encourages people to take preventive actions.