Seminar Talk by Reem Bassiouney, Georgetown University
07 March 2012
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 pmVenue: Room Bancroft 4.02, Mile End Campus
Politicizing Identity: Code Choice and Stance Taking during the Egyptian Revolution
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 protesters by utilizing linguistic resources. These linguistic resources include the associations and indexes of different languages and varieties, in this case Standard Arabic (SA), Egyptian Colloquial Language (ECL) 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. Secondly, this study also shows how speakers use public discourse in order to construe language as a classification strategy and an identity builder.
Dr. Bassiouney (DPhil, Oxford) is an Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Linguistics in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.